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The Water Babies 


A Fairy Tale for 
a Land Baby 


Charles Kingsley 


Edited by J.H.Stickney 
Illustrated by Florence Liley \bung 


Ginn and Company 

Boston - NewYork - Chicago - London 


] 


COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY GINN AND COMPANY 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 


316.4 






JUL 19 1916 



gltbenaeum iPregp 

GINN AND COMPANY* PRO- 
PRIETORS • BOSTON • U.S.A. 


©CU43191 9 

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TO MY YOUNGEST SON 

GRENVILLE ARTHUR 

AND 

TO ALL OTHER GOOD LITTLE BOYS 


Come, read me my riddle, each good little man 
If you cannot read it, no grown-up folk can. 



i 





PREFACE 



H ARLES KINGSLEY wrote for each of his 


four children a story or a book of stories. It 


was when his youngest boy was three years old 


that he was reminded one day that while " Rose, Maurice, 
and Mary had their book” there was not yet one for 
the baby. He thereupon retired to his study and half an 
hour later appeared with the story of little Tom, which 
became the first chapter of " The Water Babies.” The 
whole book of eight chapters was composed in an incred- 
ibly short time but was not at once published. The fre- 
quent occurrence of the phrase " my little man ” serves 
to remind the reader that the story was written expressly 
for a small boy. It is breezy and tender and playful, full 
of smiles and tears, and is by far the best of Kingsley’s 
stories for children. 

In the preparation of the present edition, the task of 
the editor has been simply to let drop such passages as 
the book carried with it as a weight, and so to leave it 
a most charming and inspiring child-parable — adapted 
in every page to a child by himself, or to the schoolroom 
as a whole. Happily these parts were so distinct that 
hardly a word has been needed with which to close the 
gaps, and nothing of Tom’s history has been lost to 
the reader. 


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CONTENTS 


PAGE 

CHAPTER I * 3 

CHAPTER II 43 

CHAPTER III 70 

CHAPTER IV 106 

CHAPTER V 135 

CHAPTER VI 167 

CHAPTER VII 196 

CHAPTER VIII 228 

NOTES 275 


[vii] 
































































































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THE WATER BABIES 


A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND BABY 





THE WATER BABIES 

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND BABY 

CHAPTER I 

O NCE upon a time there was a little 
chimney sweep, and his name was Tom. 
That is a short name, and you have 
heard it before,' so you will not have much trouble 
in remembering it. He lived in a great town in 
the North country, where there were plenty of 
chimneys to sweep, and plenty of money for Tom 
to earn and his master to spend. He could not 
read nor write, and did not care to do either ; and 
he never washed himself, for there was no water 
up the court where he lived. He had never been 
taught to say his prayers. He never had heard 
of God or of Christ, except in words which you 
[ 3 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


never have heard, and which it would have been 
well if he had never heard. He cried half his 
time and laughed the other half. He cried when 
he had to climb the dark flues, rubbing his 
poor knees and elbows raw; and when the soot 
got into his eyes, which it did every day in the 
week; and when his master beat him, which he 
did every day in the week ; and when he had not 
enough to eat, which happened every day in the 
week likewise. And he laughed the other half of 
the day, when he was tossing halfpennies with 
the other boys, or playing leapfrog over the posts, 
or bowling stones at the horses’ legs, as they 
trotted by; which last was excellent fun, when 
there was a wall at hand behind which to hide. 
As for chimney sweeping, and being hungry, and 
being beaten, he took all that for the way of the 
world, like the rain and snow and thunder, and 
stood manfully with his back to it till it was over, 
as his old donkey did to a hailstorm,* and then 
shook his ears and was as jolly as ever, and 
thought of the fine times coming, when he would 
be a man and a master sweep, and sit in the 
public house with a quart of beer and a long pipe, 
and play cards for silver money, and wear velvet- 
eens and anklejacks, and keep a white bulldog 
[ 4 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


with one gray ear, and carry her puppies in his 
pocket, just like a man. And he would have 
apprentices — one, two, three if he could. How 
he would bully them and knock them about, just 
as his master did to him, and make them carry 
home the soot sacks while he rode before them 
on his donkey, with a pipe in his mouth and a 
flower in his buttonhole, like a king at the head 
of his army. Yes, there were good times coming, 
and when his master let him have a pull at the 
leavings of his beer, Tom was the jolliest boy in 
the whole town. 

One day a smart little groom rode into the 
court where Tom lived. Tom was just hiding 
behind a wall, to heave half a brick at his horse’s 
legs, as is the custom of that country when they 
welcome strangers; but the groom saw him and 
hallooed to him to know where Mr. Grimes, the 
chimney sweep, lived. Now Mr. Grimes was 
Tom’s own master, and Tom was a good man 
of business and always civil to customers; so he 
put the half brick down quietly behind the wall 
and proceeded to take orders. 

Mr. Grimes was to come up next morning to 
Sir John Harthover’s, at the Place, for his old 
chimney sweep was gone to prison, and the 
[ 5 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


chimneys wanted sweeping. And so he rode away, 
not giving Tom time to ask what the sweep had 
gone to prison for, which was a matter of inter- 
est to Tom, as he had been in prison once or 
twice himself. Moreover, the groom looked so 
very neat and clean, with his drab gaiters, drab 
breeches, drab jacket, snow-white tie with a smart 
pin in it, and clean, round, ruddy face, that Tom 
was offended and disgusted at his appearance, 
and considered him a stuck-up fellow, who gave 
himself airs because he wore smart clothes and 
other people paid for them ; and went behind 
the wall to fetch the half brick after all, but did 
not, remembering that he had come in the way 
of business, and was, as it were, under a flag 
of truce. 

His master was so delighted at his new cus- 
tomer that he knocked Tom down out of hand, 
and drank more beer that night than he usually 
did in two, in order to be sure of getting up 
in time next morning; for the more a man’s 
head aches when he wakes, the more glad he 
is to turn out and have a breath of fresh air. 
And when he did get up, at four the next 
morning, he knocked Tom down again, in 
order to teach him (as young gentlemen used 
[ 6 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


to be taught at public schools) that he must 
be an extra good boy that day, as they were 
going to a very great house and might make 
a very good thing of it if they could but give 
satisfaction. 

And Tom thought so likewise, and indeed 
would have done and behaved his best even 
without being knocked down. For of all places 
upon earth Harthover Place (which he had 
never seen) was the most wonderful, and of all 
men on earth Sir John (whom he had seen, 
having been sent to jail by him twice) was the 
most awful. 

Harthover Place was really a grand place 
even for the rich North country: with a house 
so large that in the frame-breaking riots, which 
Tom could just remember, the Duke of Well- 
ington with ten thousand soldiers and cannon 
to match were easily housed therein (at least, 
so Tom believed); with a park full of deer, 
which Tom believed to be monsters who were 
in the habit of eating children ; with miles of 
game preserves, in which Mr. Grimes and the 
collier lads poached at times, on which occasions 
Tom saw pheasants and wondered what they 
tasted like; with a noble salmon river, in which 
[ 7 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


Mr. Grimes and his friends would have liked 
to poach, but then they must have got into cold 
water, and that they did not like at all. In 
short, Harthover was a grand place, and Sir 
John a grand old man, whom even Mr. Grimes 
respected, for not only could he send Mr. Grimes 
to prison when he deserved it, as he did once or 
twice a week; not only did he own all the land 
about for miles; not only was he a jolly, honest, 
sensible squire as ever kept a pack of hounds, 
who would do what he thought right by his 
neighbors, as well as get what he thought right 
for himself ; but, what was more, he weighed 
full fifteen stone, was nobody knew how many 
inches round the chest, and could have thrashed 
Mr. Grimes himself in fair fight, which very few 
folk round there could do, and which, my dear 
little boy, would not have been right for him to 
do, as a great many things are not which one 
both can do and would like very much to do. 
So Mr. Grimes touched his hat to him when he 
rode through the town, and called him a " buirdly 
awd chap,” and his young ladies "gradely lasses” 
(which are two high compliments in the North 
country), and thought that that made up for his 
poaching Sir John’s pheasants. 

[ 8 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


Now I dare say you never got up at three 
o’clock on a midsummer morning. Some people 
get up then because they want to catch salmon ; 
and some, because they want to climb Alps ; and 
a great many more, because they must, like Tom. 
But I assure you that three o’clock on a mid- 
summer morning is the pleasantest time of all 
the twenty-four hours and all the three hundred 
and sixty-five days, and why everyone does not 
get up then, I never could tell, save that they 
are all determined to spoil their nerves and their 
complexions by doing all night what they might 
just as well do all day. But Tom went to bed 
at seven, when his master went to the public 
house, and slept like a pig; for which reason he 
was as pert as a gamecock (who always gets up 
early to wake the maids) and just ready to get 
up when fine gentlemen and ladies were just 
ready to go to bed. 

So he and his master set out ; Grimes rode 
the donkey in front, and Tom and the brushes 
walked behind; out of the court and up the 
street, past the closed window shutters, and the 
winking, weary policemen, and the roofs all 
shining gray in the gray dawn. 

They passed through the pitmen’s village, all 

[ 9 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

shut up and silent now, and through the turn- 
pike; and then they were out in the real coun- 
try and plodding along the black, dusty road 
between black slag walls, with no sound but the 
groaning and thumping of the pit engine in 
the next field. But soon the road grew white, 
and the walls likewise, and at the wall’s foot 
grew long grass and gay flowers, all drenched 
with dew; and instead of the groaning of the 
pit engine they heard the skylark saying his 
matins high up in the air, and the pitbird 
warbling in the sedges, as he had warbled all 
night long. 

All else was silent. For old Mrs. Earth was 
still fast asleep ; and, like many pretty people, 
she looked still prettier asleep than awake. The 
great elm trees in the gold-green meadows were 
fast asleep above, and the cows fast asleep be- 
neath them; nay, the few clouds which were 
about were fast asleep likewise, and so tired 
that they had lain down on the earth to rest, 
in long, white flakes and bars, among the stems 
of the elm trees and along the tops of the alders 
by the stream, waiting for the sun to bid them 
rise and go about their day’s business in the 
clear blue overhead. 

[io] 


THE WATER BABIES 

On they went; and Tom looked and looked, 
for he never had been so far into the country 
before, and longed to get over a gate and pick 
buttercups and look for birds’ nests in the hedge ; 
but Mr. Grimes was a man of business and 
would not have heard of that. 

Soon they came up with a poor Irishwoman, 
trudging along with a bundle at her back. She 
had a gray shawl over her head, and a crimson 
madder petticoat ; so you may be sure she came 
from Galway. She had neither shoes nor stock- 
ings, and limped along as if she were tired and 
footsore ; but she was a very tall, handsome 
woman, with bright gray eyes, and heavy black 
hair hanging about her cheeks. And she took 
Mr. Grimes’s fancy so much that when he came 
alongside he called out to her : " This is a hard 
road for a gradely foot like that. Will ye up, 
lass, and ride behind me ? ” 

But perhaps she did not admire Mr. Grimes’s 
look and voice, for she answered quietly, " No, 
thank you ; I ’d sooner walk with your little 
lad here.” 

"You may please yourself,” growled Grimes, 
and went on smoking. 

So she walked beside Tom, and talked to him, 
[ii] 


THE WATER BABIES 


and asked him where he lived and what he knew 
and all about himself, till Tom thought he had 
never met such a pleasant-spoken woman. And 
she asked him, at last, whether he said his 
prayers, and seemed sad when he told her that 
he knew no prayers to say. 

Then he asked her where she lived, and she 
said far away by the sea. And Tom asked her 
about the sea, and she told him how it rolled and 
roared over the rocks in winter nights, and lay 
still in the bright summer days for the children 
to bathe and play in it, and many a story more, 
till Tom longed to go and see the sea and bathe 
in it likewise. 

At last, at the bottom of a hill, they came to a 
spring, a real North-country limestone fountain, 
like one of those in Sicily or Greece, where the 
old heathen fancied the nymphs sat cooling 
themselves the hot summer’s day, while the 
shepherds peeped at them from behind the 
bushes. Out of a low cave of rock, at the foot 
of a limestone crag, the great fountain rose, quell- 
ing and bubbling and gurgling, so clear that 
you could not tell where the water ended and 
the air began, and ran away under the road, a 
stream large enough to turn a mill, among blue 
[12] 






THE WATER BABIES 

geranium and golden globeflower and wild rasp- 
berry and the bird cherry with its tassels of snow. 

And there Grimes stopped and looked, and 
Tom looked, too. Tom was wondering whether 
anything lived in that dark cave and came out 
at night to fly in the meadows. But Grimes was 
not wondering at all. Without a word he got 
off his donkey and clambered over the low road 
wall and knelt down and began dipping his ugly 
head into the spring, and very dirty he made it. 

Tom was picking the flowers as fast as he 
could. The Irishwoman helped him, and showed 
him how to tie them up, and a very pretty nose- 
gay they had made between them. But when 
he saw Grimes actually wash, he stopped, quite 
astonished; and when Grimes had finished, and 
began shaking his ears to dry them, he said, 
"Why, master, I never saw you do that before.” 

"Nor will again, most likely. ’T was n’t for 
cleanliness I did it, but for coolness. I ’d be 
ashamed to want washing every week or so, 
like any smutty collier lad.” 

" I wish I might go and dip my head in,” said 
poor little Tom. "It must be as good as putting 
it under the town pump, and there is no beadle 
here to drive a chap away.” 

[ 14 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

" Thou come along,” said Grimes. " What dost 
want with washing thyself? Thou did not drink 
half a gallon of beer last night, like me.” 

" I don’t care for you,” said naughty Tom, 
and ran down to the stream and began washing 
his face. 

Grimes was very sulky because the woman 
preferred Tom’s company to his, so he dashed 
at him with horrid words, and tore him up from 
his knees and began beating him. But Tom 
was accustomed to that, and got his head safe 
between Mr. Grimes’s legs and kicked his shins 
with all his might. 

" Are you not ashamed of yourself, Thomas 
Grimes?” cried the Irishwoman over the wall. 

Grimes looked up, startled at her knowing 
his name, but all he answered was, "No; nor 
never was yet,” and went on beating Tom. 

"True for you. If you ever had been ashamed 
of yourself, you would have gone over into 
Vendale long ago.” 

" What do you know about Vendale ? ” shouted 
Grimes, but he left off beating Tom. 

" I know about Vendale, and about you too. 
I know, for instance, what happened in Aldermire 
Copse, by night, two years ago come Martinmas.” 

[G] 


THE WATER BABIES 


"You do? ” shouted Grimes, and, leaving Tom, 
climbed up over the wall and faced the woman. 
Tom thought he was going to strike her, but 
she looked him too full and fierce in the face 
for that. 

"Yes; I was there,” said the Irishwoman 
quietly. 

" You are no Irishwoman, by your speech,” 
said Grimes after many bad words. 

" Never mind who I am. I saw what I saw, 
and if you strike that boy again, I can tell what 
I know.” 

Grimes seemed quite cowed and got on his 
donkey without another word. 

"Stop!” said the Irishwoman. "I have one 
more word for you both, for you will both see 
me again before all is over. Those that wish to 
be clean, clean they will be ; and those that wish 
to be foul, foul they will be. Remember.” 

And she turned away and through a gate 
into the meadow. Grimes stood still a moment, 
like a man who had been stunned. Th£n he 
rushed after her, shouting, " You come back!” 
But when he got into the meadow, the woman 
was not there. 

Had she hidden away? There was no place 

[ 16 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


to hide in. But Grimes looked about, and Tom 
also, for he was as puzzled as Grimes himself 
at her disappearing so suddenly ; but look where 
they would, she was not there. 

Grimes came back again as silent as a post, 
for he was a little frightened, and, getting on 
his donkey, filled a fresh pipe and smoked 
away, leaving Tom in peace. 

And now they had gone three miles and more, 
and came to Sir John’s lodge gates. 

Very grand lodges they were, with very grand 
iron gates and stone gateposts, and on the top 
of each a most dreadful bogy, all teeth, horns, 
and tail, which was the crest which Sir John’s 
ancestors wore in the Wars of the Roses; and 
very prudent men they were to wear it, for all 
their enemies must have run for their lives at 
the very first sight of them. 

Grimes rang at the gate, and out came a 
keeper on the spot, and opened. 

" I was told to expect thee,” he said. " Now, 
thou ’It be so good as to keep to the main avenue, 
and not let me find a hare or a rabbit on thee 
when thou comest back. I shall look sharp for 
one, I tell thee.” 


[i7] 


THE WATER BABIES 


" Not if it ’s in the bottom of the soot bag,” 
quoth Grimes, and at that he laughed ; and the 
keeper laughed and said, "If that ’s thy sort, I 
may as well walk up with thee to the hall.” 

"I think thou best had. It’s thy business to 
see after thy game, man, and not mine.” 

So the keeper went with them, and to Tom’s 
surprise he and Grimes chatted together all 
the way quite pleasantly. He did not know 
that a keeper is only a poacher turned outside 
in, and a poacher a keeper turned inside out. 

They walked up a great lime avenue, a full 
mile long, and between their stems Tom peeped 
trembling at the horns of the sleeping deer, 
which stood up among the ferns. Tom had 
never seen such enormous trees, and as he 
looked up he fancied that the blue sky rested 
on their heads. But he was puzzled very much 
by a strange murmuring noise which followed 
them all the way — so much puzzled that at 
last he took courage to ask the keeper what 
it was. 

He spoke very civilly, and called him Sir, for 
he was horribly afraid of him, which pleased the 
keeper, and he told him that they were the 
bees about the lime flowers. 

[18] 


THE WATER BABIES 

" What are bees ? ” asked Tom. 

" What make honey.” 

" What is honey ? ” asked Tom. 

M Thou hold thy noise, ’ v said Grimes. 

M Let the boy be,” said the keeper. " He’s 
a civil young chap now, and that ’s more than 
he ’ll be long if he bides with thee.” 

Grimes laughed, for he took that for a 
compliment. 

" I wish I were a keeper,” said Tom, "to live 
in such a beautiful place, and wear green vel- 
veteens, and have a real dog-whistle at my 
button, like you.” 

The keeper laughed ; he was a kind-hearted 
fellow enough. 

" Let well alone, lad, and ill too, at times. 
Thy life’s safer than mine, at all events — eh, 
Mr. Grimes ? ” 

And Grimes laughed again, and then the 
two men began talking quite low. Tom could 
hear, though, that it was about some poaching 
fight, and at last Grimes said surlily, " Hast 
thou anything against me ? ” 

"Not now.” 

" Then don’t ask me any questions till thou 
hast, for I am a man of honor.” 

[ 19 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


And at that they both laughed again and 
thought it a very good joke. 

And by this time they were come up to the 
great iron gates in front of the house, and Tom 
stared through them at the rhododendrons and 
azaleas, which were all in flower, and then at 
the house itself, and wondered how many chim- 
neys there were in it, and how long ago it was 
built, and what was the man’s name that built 
it, and whether he got much money for his job. 

These last were very difficult questions to 
answer, for Harthover had been built at ninety 
different times and in nineteen different styles, 
and looked as if somebody had built a whole 
street of houses of every imaginable shape, and 
then stirred them together with a spoon. 

Tom and his master did not go in through 
the great iron gates, as if they had been dukes 
or bishops, but round the back way (and a very 
long way round it was) and into a little back 
door, where the ash boy let them in, yawning 
horribly; and then in a passage the house- 
keeper met them, in such a flowered chintz 
dressing gown that Tom mistook her for my 
lady herself, and she gave Grimes solemn orders 
about " Y ou will take care of this and take care 
[ 20 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


of that,” as if he was going up the chimneys, 
and not Tom. And Grimes listened, and said 
every now and then, under his voice, " You ’ll 
mind that, you little beggar?” and Tom did 
mind, all at least that he could. And then the 
housekeeper turned them into a grand room 
all covered up in sheets of brown paper, and 
bade them begin, in a lofty and tremendous 
voice; and so, after a whimper or two and a 
kick from his master, into the grate Tom went, 
and up the chimney, while a housemaid stayed 
in the room to watch the furniture, to whom 
Mr. Grimes paid many playful and chivalrous 
compliments, but met with very slight encour- 
agement in return. 

How many chimneys he swept I cannot say, 
but he swept so many that he got quite tired, 
and puzzled too, for they were not like the town 
flues to which he was accustomed, but such 
as you would find (if you would only get up 
them and look, which perhaps you would not 
like to do) in old country houses — large and 
crooked chimneys, which had been altered again 
and again, till they ran one into another, so that 
Tom fairly lost his way in them. Not that he 
cared much for that, though he was in pitchy 
[ 21 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


darkness, for he was as much at home in a 
chimney as a mole is underground ; but at last, 
coming down, as he thought, the right chimney, 
he came down the wrong one, and found himself 
standing on the hearthrug in a room the like of 
which he had never seen before. 

Tom had never seen the like. He had never 
been in gentlefolk’s rooms but when the car- 
pets were all up and the curtains down and the 
furniture huddled together under a cloth and 
the pictures covered with aprons and dusters, 
and he had often enough wondered what the 
rooms were like when they were all ready for 
the quality to sit in. And now he saw, and he 
thought the sight very pretty. 

The room was all dressed in white — white 
window curtains, white bed curtains, white furni- 
ture, and white walls, with just a few lines of 
pink here and there. The carpet was all over 
gay little flowers, and the walls were hung with 
pictures in gilt frames, which amused Tom very 
much. There were pictures of ladies and gentle- 
men, and pictures of horses and dogs. The 
horses he liked, but the dogs he did not care 
for much, for there were no bulldogs among 
them, not even a terrier. 

[ 22 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

But the two pictures which took his fancy 
most were, one a man in long garments, with 
little children and their mothers round him, who 
was laying his hand upon the children’s heads. 
That was a very pretty picture, Tom thought, to 
hang in a lady’s room — for he could see that it 
was a lady’s room by the dresses which lay about. 
The other picture was that of a man nailed to 
a cross, which surprised Torn* much. He fancied 
that he had seen something like it in a shop 
window. But why was it there ? " Poor man,” 
thought Tom, "and he looks so kind and quiet. 
But why should the lady have such a sad pic- 
ture as that in her room ? Perhaps it was some 
kinsman of hers, who had been murdered by the 
savages in foreign parts, and she kept it there for 
a remembrance.” And Tom felt sad and awed, 
and turned to look at something else. 

The next thing he saw, and that too puzzled 
him, was a washing stand, with ewers and basins 
and soap and brushes and towels, and a large 
bath full of clean water — what a heap of things, 
all for washing ! " She must be a very dirty 

lady,” thought Tom, " by my master’s rule, to 
want as much scrubbing as all that. But she 
must be very cunning to put the dirt out of the 
[ 2 3 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


way so well afterwards, for I don’t see a speck 
about the room, not even on the very towels.” 

And then, looking toward the bed, he saw that 
dirty lady, and held his breath with astonishment. 

Under the snow-white coverlet, upon the snow- 
white pillow, lay the most beautiful little girl that 
Tom had ever seen. Her cheeks were almost as 
white as the pillow, and her hair was like threads 
of gold spread all about over the bed. She might 
have been as old as Tom, or maybe a year or 
two older; but Tom did not think of that. He 
thought only of her delicate skin and golden 
hair, and wondered whether she were a real live 
person or one of the wax dolls he had seen in 
the shops. But when he saw her breathe, he 
made up his mind that she was alive, and stood 
staring at her as if she had been an angel out 
of heaven. 

"No; she cannot be dirty. She never could 
have been dirty,” thought Tom to himself. And 
then he thought, " And are all people like that 
when they are washed ? ” And he looked at his 
own wrist, and tried to rub the soot off, and 
wondered whether it ever would come off. 
" Certainly I should look much prettier then, if 
I grew at all like her.” 

[24] 





THE WATER BABIES 

And looking round, he suddenly saw, standing 
close to him, a little, ugly, black, ragged figure 
with bleared eyes and grinning white teeth. He 
turned on it angrily. What did such a little 
black ape want in that sweet young lady’s room ? 
And behold, it was himself reflected in a great 
mirror, the like of which Tom had never seen 
before. 

And Tom, for the first time in his life, found 
out that he was dirty, and burst into tears with 
shame and anger, and turned to sneak up the 
chimney again and hide, and upset the fender, 
and threw the fire irons down with a noise as 
of ten thousand tin kettles tied to ten thousand 
mad dogs’ tails. 

Up jumped the little white lady in her bed 
and, seeing Tom, screamed as shrill as any pea- 
cock. In rushed a stout old nurse from the next 
room and, seeing Tom likewise, made up her 
mind that he had come to rob, plunder, destroy, 
and burn, and dashed at him, as he lay over the 
fender, so fast that she caught him by the jacket. 

But she did not hold him. Tom had been in 
a policeman’s hands many a time, and out of 
them, too, what is more, and he would have been 
ashamed to face his friends forever if he had been 
[26] 


THE WAT ER -BABIES 

stupid enough to be caught by an old woman; 
so he doubled under the good lady’s arm, across 
the room, and out of the window in a moment. 

He did not need to drop out, though he 
would have done so bravely enough ; nor even 
to let himself down a spout, which would have 
been an old game to him, for once he got up 
by a spout to the church roof (he said to take 
jackdaws’ eggs, but the policemen said to steal 
lead) and, when he was seen on high, sat there 
till the sun got too hot, and came down by 
another spout, leaving the policemen to go back 
to the station house and eat their dinners. 

But all under the window spread a tree with 
great leaves and sweet white flowers almost as 
big as his head. It was a magnolia, I suppose, 
but Tom knew nothing about that, and cared 
less, for down the tree he went like a cat, and 
- across the garden lawn and over the iron rail- 
ings and up the park towards the wood, leaving 
the old nurse to scream murder and fire at 
the window. 

The undergardener, mowing, saw Tom and 
threw down his scythe, caught his leg in it, 
and cut his shin open, whereby he kept his bed 
for a week; but in his hurry he never knew it, 
[ 27 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


and gave chase to poor Tom. The dairymaid 
heard the noise, got the churn between her 
knees, and tumbled over it, spilling all the 
cream ; and yet she jumped up and gave chase 
to Tom. A groom cleaning Sir John’s hack 
at the stables let him go loose, whereby he 
kicked himself lame in five minutes, but he ran 
out and gave chase to Tom. Grimes upset the 
soot sack in the new-graveled yard and spoiled 
it all utterly, but he ran out and gave chase to 
Tom. The old steward opened the park gate 
in such a hurry that he hung his pony’s chin 
upon the spikes, and for aught I know it hangs 
there still ; but he jumped off and gave chase 
to Tom. The plowman left his horses at the 
headland, and one jumped over the fence and 
pulled the other into the ditch, plow and all ; 
but he ran on and gave chase to Tom. The 
keeper, who was taking a stoat out of a trap, 
let the stoat go and caught his own finger; but 
he jumped up and ran after Tom, and, consider- 
ing what he said and how he looked, I should 
have been sorry for Tom if he had caught him. 
Sir John looked out of his study window (for 
he was an early old gentleman) and up at the 
nurse, and some dirt from the roof fell in his eye, 
[28] 


THE WATER BABIES 


so that he had at last to send for the doctor; 
and yet he ran out and gave chase to Tom. 
The Irishwoman too was walking up to the 
house to beg (she must have got round by some 
byway), but she threw away her bundle and gave 
chase to Tom likewise. Only my lady did not 
give chase, for when she had put her head out 
of the window, her night wig fell into the garden, 
and she had to ring up her lady’s maid and send 
her down for it privately, which quite put her 
out of the running, so that she came in nowhere 
and is consequently not placed. 

In a word, never was there heard at Hall Place 
— not even when the fox was killed in the con- 
servatory, among acres- of broken glass and tons 
of smashed flowerpots — such a noise, row, hub- 
bub, hullabaloo, and total contempt of dignity, 
repose, and order, as that day, when Grimes, the 
gardener, the groom, the dairymaid, Sir John, the 
steward, the plowman, the keeper, and the Irish- 
woman, all ran up the park shouting " Stop 
thief!” in the belief that Tom had at least a 
thousand pounds’ worth of jewels in his empty 
pockets, and the very magpies and jays followed 
Tom up, screaking and screaming as if he were 
a hunted fox beginning to droop his brush. 

[ 2 9 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


And all the while poor Tom paddled up the 
park with his little bare feet, like a small black 
gorilla fleeing to the forest. Alas for him ! there 
was no big father gorilla therein to take his part 
— to scratch out the gardener’s inside with one 
paw, toss the dairymaid into a tree with another, 
and wrench off Sir John’s head with a third, while 
he cracked the keeper’s skull with his teeth as 
easily as if it had been a coconut or a paving stone. 

However, Tom did not remember ever having 
had a father, so he did not look for one, and 
expected to have to take care of himself ; while 
as for running, he could keep up for a couple 
of miles with any stagecoach, if there was a 
chance of a copper, and • turn coach wheels on 
his hands and feet ten times following, which 
is more than you can do. Wherefore his pur- 
suers found it very difficult to catch him, and 
we will hope that they did not catch him at all. 

Tom, of course, made for the woods. He had 
never been in a wood in his life, but he was 
sharp enough to know that he might hide in 
a bush or swarm up a tree and, altogether, had 
more chance there than in the open field. If he 
had not known that, he would have been fool- 
isher than a mouse or a minnow. 

[ 30 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


But when he got into the wood, he found it 
a very different sort of place from what he had 
fancied. He pushed into a thick cover of rhodo- 
dendrons and found himself at once caught in 
a trap. The boughs laid hold of his legs and 
arms, poked him in his face and his stomach, 
made him shut his eyes tight (though that was 
no great loss, for he could not see at best a yard 
before his nose); and when he got through the 
rhododendrons, the hassock grass and sedges 
tumbled him over and cut his poor little fingers 
afterwards most spitefully; the birches birched 
him as soundly as if he had been a nobleman 
at Eton, and over the face too (which is not fair 
switching, as all brave boys will agree); and the 
lawyers tripped him up and tore his shins as if 
they had sharks’ teeth — which lawyers are likely 
enough to have. 

"I must get out of this,” thought Tom, “or 
I shall stay here till somebody comes to help 
me — which is just what I don’t want.” 

But how to get out was the difficult matter. 
And indeed, I don’t think he would ever have 
got out at all, but have stayed there till the cock 
robins covered him with leaves, if he had not 
suddenly run his head against a wall. 

[3i] 


THE WATER BABIES 


Now running your head against a wall is not 
pleasant, especially if it is a loose wall, with the 
stones all set on edge, and a sharp-cornered one 
hits you between the eyes and makes you see all 
manner of beautiful stars. The stars are very 
beautiful, certainly; but unfortunately they go in 
the twenty-thousandth part of a split second, and 
the pain which comes after them does not. And 
so Tom hurt his head, but he was a brave boy 
and did not mind that a penny. He guessed that 
over the wall the cover would end, and up it he 
went and over like a squirrel. 

And there he was, out on the great grouse 
moors, which the country folk called Harthover 
Fell — heather and bog and rock stretching 
away and up, up to the very sky. 

Now Tom was a cunning little fellow — as 
cunning as an old Exmoor stag. Why not ? 
Though he was but ten years old, he had lived 
longer than most stags and had more wits to 
start with into the bargain. 

He knew as well as a stag that if he backed 
he might throw the hounds out ; so the first 
thing he did when he was over the wall was to 
make the neatest double sharp to his right and 
run along under the wall for nearly half a mile. 

[ 32 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


Whereby Sir John, and the keeper, and the 
steward, and the gardener, and the plowman, 
and the dairymaid, and all the hue and cry 
together went on ahead half a mile in the very 
opposite direction and inside the wall, leaving 
him a mile off on the outside, while Tom heard 
their shouts die away in the wood and chuckled 
to himself merrily. 

At last he came to a dip in the land and went 
to the bottom of it, and then he turned bravely 
away from the wall and up the moor, for he 
knew that he had put a hill between him and 
his enemies, and could go on without their 
seeing him. 

But the Irishwoman, alone of them all, had 
seen which way Tom went. She had kept ahead 
of everyone the whole time ; and yet she neither 
walked nor ran. She went along quite smoothly 
and gracefully, while her feet twinkled past each 
other so fast that you could not see which was 
foremost, till everyone asked the other who the 
strange woman was, and all agreed, for want 
of anything better to say, that she must be in 
league with Tom. 

But when she came to the plantation, they 
lost sight of her; and they could do no less, 
[ 33 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


for she went quietly over the wall after Tom 
and followed him wherever he went. Sir John 
and the rest saw no more of her, and out of sight 
was out of mind. 

And now Tom was right away into the 
heather, over just such a moor as those in which 
you have been bred, except that there were rocks 
and stones lying about everywhere, and that 
instead of the moor growing flat as he went 
upwards, it grew more and more broken and 
hilly, but not so rough but that little Tom could 
jog along well enough and find time, too, to stare 
about at the strange place, which was like a new 
world to him. 

He saw great spiders there, with crowns and 
crosses marked on their backs, who sat in the 
middle of their webs and, when they saw Tom 
coming, shook them so fast that they became 
invisible. Then he saw lizards, brown and gray 
and green, and thought they were snakes and 
would sting him; but they were as much fright- 
ened as he and shot away into the heath. And 
then, under a rock, he saw a pretty sight — 
a great, brown, sharp-nosed creature with a white 
tag to her brush, and round her four or five 
smutty little cubs, the funniest fellows Tom ever 
[ 34 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


saw. She lay on her back, rolling about and 
stretching out her legs and head and tail in the 
bright sunshine; and the cubs jumped over her 
and ran round her and nibbled her paws and 
lugged her about by the tail, and she seemed to 
enjoy it mightily. But one selfish little fellow 
stole away from the rest to a dead crow close 
by, and dragged it off to hide it, though it was 
nearly as big as he was. Whereat all his little 
brothers set off after him in full cry and saw 
Tom, and then all ran back, and up jumped 
Mrs. Vixen and caught one up in her mouth, 
and the rest toddled after her and into a dark 
crack in the rocks, and there was an end of 
the show. 

And next he had a fright, for as he scrambled 
up a sandy brow — whirr-poof-poof-cock-cock-kick 
— something went off in his face with a most 
horrid noise. He thought the ground had blown 
up and the end of the world come. 

And when he opened his eyes (for he shut 
them very tight), it was only an old cock grouse, 
who had been washing himself in sand, like an 
Arab, for want of water, and who, when Tom 
had all but trodden on him, jumped up with 
a noise like the express train, leaving his wife 
[ 35 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


and children to shift for themselves, like an old 
coward, and went off screaming, " Cur-ru-u-uck, 
cur-ru-u-uck — murder, thieves, fire — cur-u-uck- 
cock-kick — the end of the world is come — kick- 
kick-cock-kick ! ” He was always fancying that 
the end of the world was come when anything 
happened which was farther off than the end 
of his own nose. But the end of the world was 
not come, any more than the twelfth of August 
was, though the old grouse cock was quite 
certain of it. 

So the old grouse came back to his wife and 
family an hour afterwards, and said solemnly, 
" Cock-cock-kick ; my dears, the end of the world 
is not quite come, but I assure you it is coming 
the day after to-morrow — cock.” But his wife 
had heard that so often that she knew all about 
it, and a little more. And besides, she was the 
mother of a family and had seven little poults 
to wash and feed every day, and that made her 
very practical and a little sharp-tempered; so 
all she answered was, " Kick-kick-kick — go and 
catch spiders, go and catch spiders — kick.” 

So Tom went on and on, he hardly knew why, 
but he liked the great, wide, strange place, and 
the cool, fresh, bracing air. But he went more 
[ 36 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


and more slowly as he got higher up the hill, 
for now the ground grew very bad indeed. In- 
stead of soft turf and springy heather he met 
great patches of flat limestone rock, just like 
ill-made pavements, with deep cracks between 
the stones and ledges, filled with ferns; so he 
had to hop from stone to stone, and now and 
then he slipped in between and hurt his little 
bare toes, though they were tolerably tough 
ones ; but still he would go on and up, he could 
not tell why. 

What would Tom have said if he had seen, 
walking over the moor behind him, the very 
same Irishwoman who had taken his part upon 
the road? But whether it was that he looked 
too little behind him, or whether it was that she 
kept out of sight behind the rocks and knolls, 
he never saw her, though she saw him. 

And now he began to get a little hungry and 
very thirsty, for he had run a long way, and the 
sun had risen high in heaven, and the rock was 
as hot as an oven, and the air danced reels over 
it as it does over a limekiln, till everything round 
seemed quivering and melting in the glare. 

But he could see nothing to eat anywhere, 
and still less to drink. 

[ 37 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


The heath was full of bilberries and whim- 
berries, but they were only in flower yet, for it 
was June. And as for water, who can find that 
on the top of a limestone rock? Now and then 
he passed by a deep, dark swallow hole, going 
down into the earth as if it was the chimney of 
some dwarfs house underground ; and more than 
once, as he passed, he could hear water falling, 
trickling, tinkling, many, many feet below. How 
he longed to get down to it and cool his poor 
baked lips ! But, brave little chimney sweep as 
he was, he dared not climb down such chimneys 
as those. 

So he went on and on till his head spun 
round with the heat and he thought he heard 
church bells ringing a long way off. 

" Ah ! ” he thought, " where there is a church 
there will be houses and people, and perhaps 
someone will give me a bit and a sup.” So he 
set off again to look for the church, for he was 
sure that he heard the bells quite plain. 

And in a minute more, when he looked round, 
he stopped again and said, "Why, what a big 
place the world is ! ” 

And so it was, for from the top of the moun- 
tain he could see — what could he not see ? 

[ 38 ] 



THE WATER BABIES 


Behind him, far below, was Harthover, and 
the dark woods, and the shining salmon river; 
and on his left, far below, was the town and the 
smoking chimneys of the collieries; and far, far 
away the river widened to the shining sea, and 
little white specks, which were ships, lay on its 
bosom. Before him lay, spread out like a map, 
great plains, and farms, and villages, amid dark 
knots of trees. They all seemed at his very feet, 
but he had sense to see that they were long 
miles away. And to his right rose moor after 
moor, hill after hill, till they faded away, blue 
into blue sky. 

But between him and those moors, and really 
at his very feet, lay something to which, as soon 
as Tom saw it, he determined to go, for that 
was the place for him. A deep, deep green and 
rocky valley, very narrow and filled with wood ; 
but through the wood, hundreds of feet below 
him, he could see a clear stream glance. Oh, if 
he could but get down to that stream ! Then, 
by the stream, he saw the roof of a little cottage, 
and a little garden set out in squares and beds. 
And there was a tiny little red thing moving 
in the garden, no bigger than a fly. As Tom 
looked down he saw that it was a woman in a 


THE WATER BABIES 

red petticoat. Ah ! perhaps she would give him 
something to eat. And there were the church 
bells ringing again. Surely there must be a vil- 
lage down there. Well, nobody would know him 
or what had happened at the Place. The news 
could not have got there yet, even if Sir John 
had set all the policemen in the county after 
him ; and he could get down there in five 
minutes. 

Tom was quite right about the hue and cry 
not having got thither, for he had come, without 
knowing it, the best part of ten miles from 
Harthover; but he was wrong about getting 
down in five minutes, for the cottage was more 
than a mile off and a good thousand feet below. 

However, down he went, like a brave little 
man as he was, though he was very footsore and 
tired and hungry and thirsty, while the church 
bells rang so loud he began to think that they 
must be inside his own head, and the river 
chimed and tinkled far below; and this was the 
song which it sang: 

Clear and cool, clear and cool, 

By laughing shallow and dreaming pool ; 

Cool and clear, cool and clear, 

By shining shingle and foaming weir ; 

[41 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


Under the crag where the ouzel sings, 

And the ivied wall where the church bell rings, 
Undefiled for the undefiled ; 

Play by me, bathe in me, mother and child. 

Dank and foul, dank and foul, 

By the smoky town in its murky cowl ; 

Foul and dank, foul and dank, 

By wharf and sewer and slimy bank ; 

Darker and darker the further I go, 

Baser and baser the richer I grow ; 

Who dare sport with the sin-defiled ? 

Shrink from me, turn from me, mother and child. 

Strong and free, strong and free, 

The floodgates are open, away to the sea ; 

Free and strong, free and strong, 

Cleansing my streams as I hurry along 
To the golden sands, and the leaping bar, 

And the taintless tide that awaits me afar, 

As I lose myself in the infinite main, 

Like a soul that has sinned and is pardoned again. 
Undefiled for the undefiled, 

Play by me, bathe in me, mother and child. 

So Tom went down, and all the while he never 
saw the Irishwoman going down behind him. 


[42 ] 



CHAPTER II 

A /TILE off and a thousand feet down. 

So Tom found it, though it seemed 
as if he could have chucked a pebble 
onto the back of the woman in the red petticoat, 
who was weeding in the garden, or even across 
the dale to the rocks beyond. 

For the bottom of the valley was just one 
field broad, and on the other side ran the stream, 
and above it, gray crag, gray down, gray stair, 
gray moor, walled up to heaven. 

A quiet, silent, rich, happy place ; a narrow 
crack cut deep into the earth — so deep and 
so out of the way that the bad bogies can hardly 
find it out. 

And first Tom went down three hundred feet 
of steep heather mixed up with loose brown grit- 
stone as rough as a file, which was not pleasant 
[ 43 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

to his poor little heels as he came bump, stump, 
jump, down the steep. And still he thought he 
could throw a stone into the garden. 

Then he went down three hundred feet of 
limestone terraces, one below the other, as 
straight as if Mr. George White had ruled them 
with his ruler and then cut them out with his 
chisel. There was no heath there, but — 

First a little grass slope covered with the 
prettiest flowers, rockrose and saxifrage, and 
thyme and basil, and all sorts of sweet herbs. 

Then bump down a two-foot step of limestone. 

Then another bit of grass and flowers. 

Then bump down a one-foot step. 

Then another bit of grass and flowers, for 
fifty yards, as steep as the house roof. 

Then another step of stone, ten feet high; 
and there he had to stop himself and crawl along 
the edge to find a crack, for if he had rolled 
over, he would have rolled right into the old 
woman’s garden and frightened her out of her 
wits. 

Then when he had found a dark, narrow crack 
full of green-stalked fern, such as hangs in the 
basket in the drawing-room, and had crawled 
down through it with knees and elbows, as he 
[ 44 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

would down a chimney, there was another grass 
slope and another step, and so on till — O dear 
me ! I wish it was all over, and so did he. And 
yet he thought he could throw a stone into the 
old woman’s garden. 

At last he came to a bank of beautiful shrubs, 
— whitebeam with its great silver-backed leaves, 
and mountain ash, and oak, — and below them 
cliff and crag, cliff and crag, with great beds of 
crown ferns and wood sage, while through the 
shrubs he could see the stream sparkling and 
hear it murmur on the white pebbles. He did 
not know that it was three hundred feet below. 

You would have been giddy, perhaps, at look- 
ing down, but Tom was not. He was a brave 
little chimney sweep, and when he found him- 
self on the top of a high cliff, instead of sitting 
down and crying, he said, "Ah, this will just 
suit me ! ” though he was very tired ; and down 
he went, by stock and stone, sedge and ledge, 
bush and rush, as if he had been born a jolly 
little black ape, with four hands instead of two. 

And all the while he never saw the Irishwoman 
coming down behind him. 

But he was getting terribly tired now. The 
burning sun on the fells had sucked him up, 
[ 45 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


but the damp heat of the woody crag sucked 
him up still more. 

At last he got to the bottom; but, behold, 
it was not the bottom, as people usually find 
when they are coming down a mountain; for 
at the foot of the crag were heaps and heaps 
of fallen limestone of every size, from that of 
your head to that of a stage wagon, with 
holes between them full of sweet heath fern ; 
and before Tom got through them, he was out 
in the bright sunshine again ; and then he felt, 
once for all and suddenly, as people generally 
do, that he was b-e-a-t, beat. 

You must expect to be beat a few times in 
your life, little man, if you live such a life as 
a man ought to live, let you be as strong and 
healthy as you may; and when you are, you 
will find it a very ugly feeling. I hope that 
that day you may have a stout, stanch friend 
by you who is not beat; for if you have not, 
you had best lie where you are and wait for 
better times, as poor Tom did. 

He could not get on. The sun was burning, 
and yet he felt chill all over. He was quite 
empty, and yet he felt quite sick. There was but 
two hundred yards of smooth pasture between 
[ 46 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

him and the cottage, and yet he could not walk 
down it. He could hear the stream murmuring 
only one field beyond it, and yet it se'emed to 
him as if it was a hundred miles off. 

He lay down on the grass till the beetles ran 
over him and the flies settled on his nose. I 
don’t know when he would have got up again 
if the gnats and the midges had not taken 
compassion on him. But the gnats blew their 
trumpets so loud in his ear, and the midges 
nibbled so at his hands and face wherever they 
could find a place free from soot, that at last 
he woke up and stumbled away, down over a 
low wall, and into a narrow road, and up to 
the cottage door. 

And a neat, pretty cottage it was, with clipped 
yew hedges all round the garden, and yews 
inside too. And out of the open door came 
a noise like that of the frogs when they know 
that it is going to be scorching hot to-morrow 
— and how they know that I don’t know, and 
you don’t know, and nobody knows. 

He came slowly up to the open door, which 
was all hung round with clematis and roses, 
and then peeped in, half afraid. 

And there sat by the empty fireplace, which 
[ 47 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


was filled with a pot of sweet herbs, the nicest 
old woman that ever was seen, in her red petti- 
coat and short dimity bedgown and clean white 
cap, with a black silk handkerchief over it, tied 
under her chin. At her feet sat the grandfather 
of all the cats, and opposite her sat, on two 
benches, twelve or fourteen neat, rosy, chubby 
little children learning their crisscross-row, and 
gabble enough they made about it. 

Such a pleasant cottage it was, with a shiny, 
clean stone floor, and curious old prints on 
the walls, and an old black-oak sideboard full 
of bright pewter and brass dishes, and a cuckoo 
clock in the corner, which began shouting as 
soon as Tom appeared — not that it was fright- 
ened at Tom, but that it was just eleven o’clock. 

All the children started at Tom’s dirty black 
figure ; the girls began to cry, and the boys 
began to laugh, and all pointed at him rudely 
enough; but Tom was too tired to care for that. 

" What art thou, and what dost want ? ” cried 
the old dame. "A chimney sweep ! Away with 
thee. I ’ll have no sweeps here.” 

" Water,” said poor little Tom, quite faint. 

" Water? There’s plenty i’ the beck,” she 
said quite sharply. 


[ 48 ] 



THE WATER BABIES 


" But I can’t get there ; I ’m most clemmed 
with hunger and drought.” And Tom sank 
down upon the doorstep and laid his head against 
the post. 

And the old dame looked at him through 
her spectacles one minute, and two, and three ; 
and then she said, "He’s sick, and a bairn’s 
a bairn, sweep or none.” 

"Water,” said Tom. 

" God forgive me ! ” and she put by her spec- 
tacles and rose and came to Tom. "Water’s 
bad for thee ; I ’ll give thee milk.” And she 
toddled off into the next room and brought a 
cup of milk and a bit of bread. 

Tom drank the milk off at one draught and 
then looked up, revived. 

" Where did$t come from ? ” said the dame. 

"Over Fell, there,” said Tom, and pointed up 
into the sky. 

"Over Harthover? and down Lewthwaite 
Crag ? Art sure thou art not lying ? ” 

"Why should I?” said Tom, and leaned his 
head against the post. 

" And how got ye up there ? ” 

" I came over from the Place,” and Tom was 
so tired and desperate he had no heart or time 
[5o] 


THE WATER BABIES 

to think of a story, so he told all the truth in a 
few words. 

" Bless thy little heart ! And thou hast not 
been stealing, then ? ” 

" No.” 

" Bless thy little heart ! and I ’ll warrant not. 
Why, God ’s guided the bairn because he was 
innocent ! Away from the Place, and over 
Harthover Fell, and down Lewthwaite Crag! 
Who ever heard the like, if God had n’t led 
him ? Why dost not eat thy bread ? ” 

" I can’t.” 

M It ’s good enough, for I made it myself.” 

" I can’t,” said Tom, and he laid his head on 
his knees, and then asked, " Is it Sunday?” 

" No, then; why should it be?” 

" Because I hear the churchy bells ringing so.” 
" Bless thy pretty heart ! The bairn ’s sick. 
Come wi’ me, and I ’ll hap thee up somewhere. 
If thou wert a bit cleaner, I ’d put thee in my own 
bed, for the Lord’s sake. But come along here.” 

But when Tom tried to get up, he was so 
tired and giddy that she had to help him and 
lead him. 

She put him in an outhouse upon soft, sweet 
hay and an old rug, and bade him sleep off his 
[5i] 


THE WATER BABIES 


walk and she would come to him when school 
was over, in an hour’s time. 

And so she went in again, expecting Tom to 
fall fast asleep at once. 

But Tom did not fall asleep. 

Instead of it he turned and tossed and kicked 
about in the strangest way, and felt so hot all 
over that he longed to get into the river to cool 
himself ; and then he fell half asleep and 
dreamed that he heard the little white lady cry- 
ing to him, " Oh, you ’re so dirty ; go and be 
washed,” and then that he heard the Irish- 
woman saying, w Those that wish to be clean, 
clean they will be.” And then he heard the 
church bells ring so loud, close to him, too, that 
he was sure it must be Sunday, in spite of what 
the old dame had said, and he would go to 
church and see what a church was like inside, 
for he had never been in one, poor little fellow, 
in all his life. But the people would never let 
him come in, all over soot and dirt like that. 
He must go to the river and wash first. And 
he said out loud again and again, though being 
half asleep he did not know it, " I must be clean, 
I must be clean.” 

And all of a sudden he found himself, not in 
[ 52 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


the outhouse on the hay, but in the middle of 
a meadow, over the road, with the stream just 
before him, saying continually, " I must be clean, 
I must be clean.” He had got there on his own 
legs, between sleep and awake, as children will 
often get out of bed and go about the room when 
they are not quite well. But he was not a bit 
surprised, and went on to the bank of the brook 
and lay down on the grass and looked into the 
clear limestone water, with every pebble at the 
bottom bright and clean, while the little silver 
trout dashed about in fright at the sight of his 
black face ; and he dipped his hand in and 
found it so cool, cool, cool ; and he said, " I will 
be a fish ; I will swim in the water ; I must be 
clean, I must be clean.” 

So he pulled off all his clothes in such haste 
that he tore some of them, which was easy 
enough with such ragged old things. And he 
put his poor hot, sore feet into the water; and 
then his legs ; and the further he went in, the 
more the church bells rang in his head. 

"Ah,” said Tom, "I must be quick and wash 
myself ; the bells are ringing quite loud now, 
and they will stop soon, and then the door will 
be shut and I shall never be able to get in at all.” 

[ 53 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


And all the while he never saw the Irish- 
woman, not behind him this time, but before. 
For just before he came to the riverside, she 
had stepped down into the cool, clear water; 
and her shawl and her petticoat floated off her, 
and the green water weeds floated round her 
sides, and the white water lilies floated round 
her head, and the fairies of the stream came up 
from the bottom and bore her away and down 
upon their arms, for she was the queen of them 
all and perhaps of more besides. 

" Where have you been ? ” they asked her. 

“ I have been smoothing sick folk’s pillows 
and whispering sweet dreams into their ears ; 
opening cottage casements to let out the stifling 
air ; coaxing little children away from gutters 
and foul pools where fever breeds; doing all I 
can to help those who will not help themselves 
— and little enough that is, and weary work for 
me. But I have brought you a new little brother 
and watched him safe all the way here.” 

Then all the fairies laughed for joy at the 
thought that they had a little brother coming. 

" But mind, maidens, he must not see you or 
know that you are here. He is but a savage 
now and like the beasts, and from the beasts he 
[ 54 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


must learn. So you must not play with him or 
speak to him or let him see you, but only keep 
him from being harmed.” 

Then the fairies were sad because they could 
not play with their new brother, but they always 
did what they were told. 

And their queen floated away down the river, 
and whither she went, thither she came. But all 
this Tom, of course, never saw or heard, and 
perhaps if he had, it would have made little 
difference in the story, for he was so hot and 
thirsty, and longed so to be clean for once, that 
he tumbled himself as quick as he could into 
the clear, cool stream. 

And he had not been in it two minutes be- 
fore he fell fast asleep, into the quietest, sun- 
niest, coziest sleep that ever he had in his life ; 
and he dreamed about the green meadows by 
which he had walked that morning, and the tall 
elm trees, and the sleeping cows; and after that 
he dreamed of nothing at all. 

The reason of his falling into such a delight- 
ful sleep is very simple, and yet hardly anyone 
has found it out. It was merely that the fairies 
took him. 

Some people think that there are no fairies.. 
[ 55 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


Well, perhaps there are none. But it is a wide 
world, my little man, and plenty of room in it 
for fairies without people seeing them — unless, 
of course, they look in the right place. The 
most wonderful and the strangest things in the 
world, you know, are just the things which no 
one can see. There is life in you, and it is the 
life in you which makes you grow and move and 
think; and yet you can’t see it. And there is 
steam in a steam engine, and that is what makes 
it move ; and yet you can’t see it. And so there 
may be fairies in the world. At all events, we 
will make believe that there are fairies. It will 
not be the last time by many a one that we shall 
have to make believe. And yet, after all, there 
is no need for that. There must be fairies, for 
this is a fairy tale; and how can one have a 
fairy tale if there are no fairies? 

You don’t see the logic of that? Perhaps not. 
Then please not to see the logic of a great many 
arguments exactly like it, which you will hear 
before your beard is gray. 

The kind old dame came back at twelve, when 
school was over, to look at Tom ; but there was no 
Tom there. She looked about for his footprints, 
. but the ground was so hard that there were none. 

[ 56 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


So she went in again quite sulky, thinking 
that little Tom had tricked her with a false 
story, and shammed ill, and then run away again. 

But she altered her mind the next day, for 
when Sir John and the rest of them had run 
themselves out of breath and lost Tom, they 
went back again, looking very foolish. 

And they looked more foolish still when Sir 
John heard more of the story from the nurse, 
and more foolish still again when they heard 
the whole story from Miss Ellie, the little lady 
in white. All she had seen was a poor little 
black chimney sweep, crying and sobbing and 
going to get up the chimney again. Of course 
she was very much frightened, and no wonder. 
But that was all. The boy had taken nothing 
in the room ; by the mark of his little sooty feet 
they could see that he had never been off the 
hearthrug till the nurse caught hold of him. It 
was all a mistake. 

So Sir John told Grimes to go home, and 
promised him five shillings if he would bring 
the boy quietly up to him, without beating him, 
that he might be sure of the truth ; for he took 
for granted, and Grimes too, that Tom had made 
his way home. 


[ 57 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


But no Tom came back to Mr. Grimes that 
evening, and he went to the police office to tell 
them to look out for the boy. But no Tom was 
heard of. As for his having gone over those 
great fells to Vendale, they no more dreamed 
of that than of his having gone to the moon. 

So Mr. Grimes came up to Harthover next 
day with a very sour face ; but when he got 
there, Sir John was over the hills and far away, 
and Mr. Grimes had to sit in the outer servants’ 
hall all day and drink strong ale to wash away 
his sorrows, and they were washed away long 
before Sir John came back. 

For good Sir John had slept very badly that 
night, and he said to his lady, " My dear, the boy 
must have got over into the grouse moors and lost 
himself ; and he lies very heavily on my conscience, 
poor little lad. But I know what I will do.” 

So at five the next morning up he got, and 
into his bath, and into his shooting jacket and 
gaiters, and into the stable yard, like a fine old 
English gentleman, with a face as red as a rose, 
and a hand as hard as a table, and a back as 
broad as a bullock’s; and bade them bring his 
shooting pony, and the keeper to come on his 
pony, and the huntsman, and the first whip, 
[ 58 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

and the second whip, and the underkeeper with 
the bloodhound in a leash — a great dog as tall 
as a calf, of the color of a gravel walk, with 
mahogany ears and nose, and a throat like a 
church bell. They took him up to the place 
where Tom had gone into the wood, and there 
the hound lifted up his mighty voice and told 
them all he knew. 

Then he took them to the place where Tom 
had climbed the wall, and they shoved it down 
and all got through. 

And then the wise dog took them over the 
moor and over the fells, step by step, very 
slowly, for the scent was a day old, you know, 
and very light from the heat and drought. But 
that was why cunning old Sir John started at 
five in the morning. 

And at last he came to the top of Lewth waite 
Crag, and there he bayed and looked up in their 
faces, as much as to say, " I tell you he is gone 
down here ! ” 

They could hardly believe that Tom would 
have gone so far; and when they looked at that 
awful cliff, they could never believe that he 
would have dared to face it. But if the dog said 
so, it must be true. 


[ 59 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

" Heaven forgive us!” said Sir John. " If we 
find him at all, we shall find him lying at the 
bottom.” And he slapped his great hand upon 
his great thigh and said : " Who will go down 
over Lewthwaite Crag and see if that boy is 
alive? O that I were twenty years younger, 
and I would go down myself ! ” And so he 
would have done, as well as any sweep in the 
county. Then he said, " Twenty pounds to the 
man who brings me that boy alive ! ” and, as 
was his way, what he said he meant. 

Now among the lot was a little groom boy — 
a very little groom indeed ; and he was the same 
who had ridden up the court and told Tom to 
come to the Hall; and he said: "Twenty pounds 
or none, I will go down over Lewthwaite Crag, 
if it ’s only for the poor boy’s sake. For he was 
as civil a spoken little chap as ever climbed a 
flue.” 

So down over Lewthwaite Crag he went. A 
very smart groom he was at the top, and a very 
shabby one at the bottom ; for he tore his 
gaiters, and he tore his breeches, and he tore 
his jacket, and he burst his braces, and he burst 
his boots, and he lost his hat, and, what was 
worst of all, he lost his shirt pin, which he 
[60] 


THE WATER BABIES 

prized very much, for it was gold, but he never 
saw anything of Tom. 

And all the while Sir John and the rest were 
riding round, full three miles to the right, and 
back again, to get into Vendale and to the 
foot of the crag. 

When they came to the old dame’s school, 
all the children came out to see. And the old 
dame came out, too ; and when she saw Sir 
John, she curtsied very low, for she was a 
tenant of his. 

" Well, dame, and how are you ? ” said Sir 
John. 

" Blessings on you as broad as your back, 
Harthover,” says she (she did n’t call him Sir 
John, but only Harthover, for that is the fashion 
in the North country), "and welcome into Ven- 
dale ; but you ’re no hunting the fox this time 
of year ? ” 

" I am hunting, and strange game, too,” 
said he. 

" Blessings on your heart ; and what makes 
you look so sad the morn ? ” 

" I ’m looking for a lost child, a chimney 
sweep, that is run away.” 

"O Harthover, Harthover,” says she, "ye were 

[61] 


THE WATER BABIES 

always a just man and a merciful, and ye ’ll no 
harm the poor little lad if I give you tidings 
of him ? ” 

" Not I, not I, dame. I ’m afraid we hunted 
him out of the house all on a miserable mis- 
take, and the hound has brought him to the 
top of Lewthwaite Crag, and — ” 

Whereat the old dame broke out crying 
without letting him finish his story. 

"So he told me the truth after all, poor little 
dear! Ah, first thoughts are best, and a body’s 
heart ’ll guide them right if they will but hearken 
to it.” And then she told Sir John all. 

" Bring the dog here and lay him on,” said 
Sir John without another word, and he set his 
teeth very hard. 

And the dog opened at once and went away 
at the back of the cottage, over the road and 
over the meadow and through a bit of alder 
copse ; and there, upon an alder stump, they 
saw Tom’s clothes lying. And then they knew 
as much about it all as there was any need to 
know. 

And Tom ? 

Ah, now comes the most wonderful part of 
this wonderful story. Tom, when he woke, — 
[62] 


THE WATER BABIES 

for of course he woke; children always wake 
after they have slept exactly as long as is good 
for them, — found himself swimming about in 
the stream, being about four inches long and 
having round his neck a set of gills, which he 
mistook for a lace frill till he pulled at them, 
found he hurt himself, and made up his mind 
that they were part of himself and best left 
alone. 

In fact, the fairies had turned him into a 
water baby. 

A water baby? You never heard of a water 
baby. Perhaps not. That is the very reason 
why this story was written. There are a great 
many things in the world which you never 
heard of, and a great many more which nobody 
ever heard of, and a great many things, too, 
which nobody will ever hear of. 

" But there are no such things as water 
babies.” 

How do -you know that? Have you been 
there to see? And if you had been there to 
see, and had seen none, that would not prove 
that there were none. If Mr. Garth does not 
find a fox in Eversley Wood, that does not 
prove that there are no such things as foxes. 

[ 63 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

" But surely, if there were water babies, some- 
body would have caught one at least ? ” 

Well; how do you know that somebody has 
not ? 

" But they would have put it into a bottle of 
spirits and sent it to Professor Owen or to 
Professor Huxley, to see what they would say 
about it.” 

Ah, my dear little man! that does not follow 
at all, as you will see before the end of the story. 

No water babies, indeed ? There are land 
babies ; then why not water babies ? Are there 
not water rats, water flies, water crickets, water 
crabs, water tortoises, water scorpions, water ti- 
gers and water hogs, water cats and water dogs, 
sea lions and sea bears, sea horses and sea ele- 
phants, sea mice and sea urchins, sea razors 
and sea pens, sea combs and sea fans; and of 
plants, are there not water grass and water 
crowfoot, water milfoil, and so on without end? 

Do not even you know that a green drake and 
an alder fly and a dragon fly live under water till 
they change their skins, just as Tom changed 
his ? And if a water animal can continually 
change into a land animal, why should not a land 
animal sometimes change into a water animal ? 

[ 64 ] 






THE WATER BABIES 

If the changes of the lower animals are so 
wonderful and so difficult to discover, why 
should not there be changes in the higher 
animals far more wonderful and far more diffi- 
cult to discover? And may not man, the crown 
and flower of all things, undergo some change 
more wonderful than all the rest? 

Till you know a great deal more about nature 
than Professor Owen and Professor Huxley put 
together, don’t tell me about what cannot be, or 
fancy that anything is too wonderful to be true. 

Am I in earnest ? O dear no. Don’t you 
know that this is a fairy tale, and all fun and 
pretense, and that you are not to believe one 
word of it, even if it is true ? 

But at all events, so it happened to Tom. 
And therefore the keeper and the groom and 
Sir John made a great mistake, and were very 
unhappy (Sir John at least) without any reason, 
when they found a black thing in the water 
and said it was Tom’s body and that he had 
been drowned. They were utterly mistaken. 
Tom was quite alive, and cleaner and merrier 
than he ever had been. The fairies had washed 
him, you see, in the swift river so thoroughly 
that not only his dirt but his whole husk and 
[ 66 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

shell had been washed quite off him, and the 
pretty little real Tom was washed out of the 
inside of it and swam away, as a caddis dpes 
when its case of stones and silk is bored through, 
and away it goes on its back, paddling to the 
shore, there to split its skin and fly away as a 
caperer, on four fawn-colored wings, with long legs 
and horns. They are foolish fellows, the caperers, 
and fly into the candle at night if you leave the 
door open. We will hope Tom will be wiser, now 
he has got safe out of his sooty old shell. 

But good Sir John did not understand all this, 
and he took it into his head that Tom was 
drowned. When they looked into the empty 
pockets of his shell and found no jewels there, 
nor money, — nothing but three marbles and a 
brass button with a string to it, — then Sir John 
did something as like crying as ever he did in 
his life, and blamed himself more bitterly than 
he need have done. So he cried, and the groom 
boy cried, and the huntsman cried, and the dame 
cried, and the little girl cried, and the dairy- 
maid cried, and the old nurse cried (for it was 
somewhat her fault), and my lady cried ; but the 
keeper did not cry, though he had been so good- 
natured to Tom the morning before ; and Grimes 
[ 67 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


did not cry, for Sir John gave him ten pounds 
and he drank it all in a week. And the little 
girl would not play with her dolls for a whole 
week, and never forgot poor little Tom. And 
soon my lady put a pretty little tombstone over 
Tom’s shell in the little churchyard in Vendale, 
where the old dalesmen all sleep side by side 
between the limestone crags. And the dame 
decked it with garlands every Sunday till she 
grew so old that she could not stir abroad ; then 
the little children decked it for her. And always 
she sang an old, old song as she sat spinning 
what she called her wedding dress. The children 
could not understand it, but they liked it none 
the less for that, for it was very sweet and very 
sad, and that was enough for them. And these 
are the words of it: 

When all the world is young, lad, 

And all the trees are green ; 

And every goose a swan, lad, 

And every lass a queen ; 

Then hey for boot and horse, lad, 

And round the world away : 

Young blood must have its course, lad, 

And every dog his day. 

When all the world is old, lad, 

And all the trees are brown ; 

[ 68 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


And all the sport is stale, lad, 

And all the wheels run down ; 

Creep home and take your place there, 

The spent and maimed among : 

God grant you find one face there 
You loved when all was young. 

Those are the words, but they are only the 
body of it ; the soul of the song was the dear 
old woman’s sweet face and sweet voice, and the 
sweet old air to which she sang, and that, alas ! 
one cannot put on paper. And at last she grew 
so stiff and lame that the angels were forced 
to carry her, and they helped her on with her 
wedding dress and carried her up over Harthover 
Fells and a long way beyond that, too, and there 
was a new schoolmistress in Vendale. 

And all the while Tom was swimming about 
in the river, with a pretty little lace collar of gills 
about his neck, as lively as a grig and as clean 
as a fresh-run salmon. 

Now if you don’t like my story, then go to the 
schoolroom and learn your multiplication table, 
and see if you like that better. Some people, no 
doubt, would do so. So much the better for us 
if not for them. It takes all sorts, they say, to 
make a world. 


[69] 


CHAPTER III 


V ^OM was now quite amphibious. You do 
not know what that means? 

You had better, then, ask the nearest 
teacher, who may possibly answer you smartly 
enough, thus : 

" Amphibious. Adjective, derived from two 
Greek words, amphi , a fishf and bios , a beast. 
An animal supposed by our ignorant ancestors 
to be compounded of a fish and a beast ; which 
therefore, like the hippopotamus, can’t live on 
the land and dies in the water.” 

However that may be, Tom was amphibious, 
and, what is better still, he was clean. For the 
first time in his life he felt how comfortable it 
was to have nothing on him but himself. But he 
only enjoyed it ; he did not know it or think 
about it; just as you enjoy life and health, and 
[ 7 ° ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

yet never think about being alive and healthy, and 
may it be long before you have to think about it ! 

He did not remember having ever been dirty. 
Indeed, he did not remember any of his old 
troubles — being tired, or hungry, or beaten, or 
sent up dark chimneys. Since that sweet sleep 
he had forgotten all about his master, and Harth- 
over Place, and the little white girl, and, in a 
word, all that had happened to him when he 
lived before; and, what was best of all, he had 
forgotten all the bad words which he had learned 
from Grimes and the rude boys with whom he 
used to play. 

That is not strange, for you know, when you 
came into this world and became a land baby, 
you remembered nothing. So why should he 
when he became a water baby? 

Tom was very happy in the water. He had 
been sadly overworked in the land world, and 
so now, to make up for that, he had nothing 
but holidays in the water world for a long, long 
time to come. He had nothing to do now but 
enjoy himself and look at all the pretty things 
which are to be seen in the cool, clear water 
world, where the sun is never too hot and the 
frost is never too cold. 

[7i] 


THE WATER BABIES 


And what did he live on? Water cresses, per- 
haps ; or perhaps water gruel and water milk ; 
too many land babies do so likewise. But we 
do not know what one tenth of the water things 
eat, so we are not answerable for the water 
babies. 

Sometimes he went along the smooth gravel 
waterways, looking at the crickets which ran 
in and out among the stones, as rabbits do on 
land ; or he climbed over the ledges of rock 
and saw the sand-pipes hanging in thousands, 
with every one of them a pretty little head and 
legs peeping out ; or he went into a still corner 
and watched the caddises eating dead sticks 
as greedily as you would eat plum pudding, 
and building their houses with silk and glue. 
Very fanciful ladies they were; none of them 
would keep to the same materials for a day. 
One would begin with some pebbles ; then she 
would stick on a piece of green weed ; then she 
found a shell, and stuck it on, too ; and the poor 
shell was alive and did not like at all being 
taken to build houses with, but the caddis did 
not let him have any voice in the matter, being 
rude and selfish, as vain people are apt to be ; 
then she stuck on a piece of rotten wood, then a 
[ 7 2 1 


THE WATER BABIES 

very smart pink stone, and so on till she was 
patched all over like a harlequin’s coat. Then 
she found a long straw, five times as long as 
herself, and said, " Hurrah ! my sister has a 
tail and I ’ll have one, too ” ; and she stuck it 
on her back and marched about with it quite 
proud, though it was very inconvenient indeed. 
And at that tails became all the fashion among 
the caddis baits in that pool, as they were at the 
end of the Long Pond last May, and they all 
toddled about with long straws sticking out 
behind, getting between each other’s legs and 
tumbling over each other and looking so ridic- 
ulous that Tom laughed at them till he cried, 
as we did. But they were quite right, you know ; 
for people must always follow the fashion. 

Then sometimes he came to a deep, still reach, 
and there he saw the water forests. They would 
have looked to you only little weeds, but Tom, 
you must remember, was so little that everything 
looked a hundred times as big to him as it 
does to you, just as things do to a minnow, 
who sees and catches the little water creatures 
which you can only see in a microscope. 

And in the water forest he saw the water 
monkeys and water squirrels (they had all six 
[ 73 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


legs, though ; almost everything has six legs in 
the water, except efts and water babies), and 
nimbly enough they ran among the branches. 
There were water flowers there, too, in thou- 
sands, and Tom tried to pick them, but as 
soon as he touched them they drew themselves 
in and turned into knots of jelly; and then 
Tom saw that they were all alive — bells and 
stars and wheels and flowers of all beautiful 
shapes and colors, and all alive and busy just 
as Tom was. So now he found that there was 
a great deal more in the world than he had 
fancied at first sight. 

There was one wonderful little fellow, too, 
who peeped out of the top of a house built of 
round bricks. He had two big wheels and one 
little one, all over teeth, spinning round and 
round like the wheels in a threshing machine ; 
and Tom stood and stared at him, to see what 
he was going to make with his machinery. And 
what do you think he was doing? Brick-making. 
With his two big wheels he swept together all 
the mud which floated in the water; all that 
was nice in it he put in his stomach and ate; 
and all the mud he put into the little wheel 
on his breast, which really was a round hole set 
[ 74 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

with teeth; and there he spun it into a neat, 
hard, round brick; and then he took it and 
stuck it on the top of his house wall and set 
to work to make another. Now was not he a 
clever little fellow? 

Tom thought so, but when he wanted to talk 
to him the brick-maker was much too busy and 
proud of his work to take notice of him. 

Now you must know that all the things 
under the water talk, only not such a language 
as ours, but such as horses and dogs and cows 
and birds talk to each other; and Tom soon 
learned to understand them and talk to them, 
so that he might have had very pleasant com- 
pany if he had only been a good boy. But I 
am sorry to say he was too like some other 
little boys, very fond of hunting and tormenting 
creatures for mere sport. Some people say that 
boys cannot help it — that it is nature ; but 
whether it is nature or not, little boys can help 
it and must help it. For if they have naughty, 
low, mischievous tricks in their nature, as mon- 
keys have, that is no reason why they should 
give way to those tricks like monkeys, who 
know no better. And therefore they must not 
torment dumb creatures ; for if they do, a certain 
[ 75 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


old lady who is coming will surely give them 
exactly what they deserve. 

But Tom did not know that, and he pecked 
and howked the poor water things about sadly, 
till they were all afraid of him and got out of 
his way or crept into their shells, so he had 
no one to speak to or play with. 

The water fairies, of course, were very sorry 
to see him so unhappy, and longed to take 
him and tell him how naughty he was, and teach 
him to be good, and to play and romp with him, 
too ; but they had been forbidden to do that. 
Tom had to learn his lesson for himself by sound 
and sharp experience, as many another foolish 
person has to do, though there may be many 
a kind heart yearning over them all the while 
and longing to teach them what they can only 
teach themselves. 

At last one day he found a caddis and wanted 
it to peep out of its house, but its house door 
was shut. He had never seen a caddis with a 
house door before, so what must he do, the 
meddlesome little fellow, but pull it open, to 
see what the poor lady was doing inside. What 
a shame ! How should you like to have anyone 
breaking your bedroom door in, to £ee how you 
[ 76 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


looked when you were in bed? So Tom broke 
to pieces the door, which was the prettiest little 
grating of silk stuck all over with shining bits 
of crystal ; and when he looked in, the caddis 
poked out her head, and it had turned into just 
the shape of a bird’s. But when Tom spoke 
to her, she could not answer, for her mouth 
and face were tight tied up in a new nightcap of 
neat pink skin. However, if she did n’t answer, 
all the other caddises did, for they held up their 
hands and shrieked like the cats in " Struwwel- 
peter ” : " Oh, you nasty, horrid boy ; there you 
are at it again ! And she had just laid herself up 
for a fortnight’s sleep, and then she would have 
come out with such beautiful wings, and flown 
about and laid such lots of eggs; and now you 
have broken her door, and she can’t mend it 
because her mouth is tied up for a fortnight, 
and she will die. Who sent you here to worry 
us out of our lives?” 

So Tom swam away. He was very much 
ashamed of himself and felt all the naughtier, 
as little boys do when they have done wrong 
and won’t say so. 

Then he came to a pool full of little trout, 
and began tprmenting them and trying to catch 
[77 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


them, but they slipped through his fingers and 
jumped clean out of water in their fright. But 
as Tom chased them he came close to a great, 
dark hover under an alder root, and out floushed 
a huge old brown trout, ten times as big as he 
was, and ran right against him and knocked 
all the breath out of his body, and I don’t know 
which was the more frightened of the two. 

Then he went on sulky and lonely, as he de- 
served to be, and under a bank he saw a very 
ugly, dirty creature sitting, about half as big as 
himself, which had six legs and a big stomach 
and a most ridiculous head with two great eyes 
and a face just like a donkey’s. 

"Oh,” said Tom, "you are an ugly fellow, to 
be sure ! ” and he began making faces at him, 
and put his nose close to him and hallooed at 
him, like a very rude boy. 

When, hey, presto ! all the thing’s donkey face * 
came off in a moment, and out popped a long 
arm with a pair of pincers at the end of it, and 
caught Tom by the nose. It did not hurt him 
much, but it held him quite tight. 

"Yah, ah! Oh, let me go!” cried Tom. 

" Then let me go,” said the creature. " I want 
to be quiet. I want to split.” 

[ 78 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

Tom promised to let him alone, and he let go. 
"Why do you want to split?” said Tom. 

" Because my brothers and sisters have all split 
and turned into beautiful creatures with wings, 
and I want to split, too. Don’t speak to me. 
I am sure I shall split. I will split ! ” 

Tom stood still and watched him. And he 
swelled himself and puffed and stretched himself 
out stiff,- and at last — crack, puff, bang — he 
opened all down his back and then up to the 
top of his head. And out of his inside came the 
most slender, elegant, soft creature, as soft and 
smooth as Tom, but very pale and weak, like a 
little child who has been ill a long time in a dark 
room. It moved its legs very feebly and looked 
about it half ashamed, like a girl when she goes 
for the first time into a ballroom; and then it 
began walking slowly up a grass stem to the 
top of the water. 

Tom was so astonished that he never said a 
word, but he stared with all his eyes. And he 
went up to the top of the water, too, and peeped 
out to see what would happen. 

And as the creature sat in the warm, bright 
sun a wonderful change came over it. It grew 
strong and firm ; the most lovely colors began 
[ 79 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


to show on its body — blue and yellow and 
black, spots and bars and rings ; out of its back 
rose four great wings of bright brown gauze; 
and its eyes grew so large that they filled all its 
head and shone like ten thousand diamonds. 

" Oh, you beautiful creature!” said Tom, and 
he put out his hand to catch it. 

But the thing whirred up into the air and 
hung poised on its wings a moment, and then 
settled down again by Tom, quite fearless. 

"No!” it said; "you cannot catch me. I am 
a dragon fly now, the king of all the flies; and 
I shall dance in the sunshine, and hawk over the 
river, and catch gnats, and have a beautiful wife 
like myself. I know what I shall do. Hurrah ! ” 
And he flew away into the air. 

" Oh ! come back, come back,” cried Tom, 
" you beautiful creature ! I have no one to play 
with, and I am so lonely here. If you will but 
come back, I will never try to catch you.” 

" I don’t care whether you do or not,” said the 
dragon fly, " for you can’t. But when I have had 
my dinner, and looked a little about this pretty 
place, I will come back and have a little chat 
about all I have seen in my travels. Why, what 
a huge tree this is ! and what huge leaves on it ! ” 
[80] 



THE WATER BABIES 

It was only a big dock, but you know the 
dragon fly had never seen any but little water 
trees, — starwort and milfoil and water crowfoot 
and such like, — so it did look very big to him. 
Besides, he was very shortsighted, as all dragon 
flies are, and never could see a yard before his 
nose, any more than a great many other folks 
who are not half as handsome as he. 

The dragon fly did come back, and chatted 
away with Tom. He was a little conceited about 
his fine colors and his large wings, but you know 
he had been a poor, dirty, ugly creature all his 
life before, so there were great excuses for him. 
He was very fond of talking about all the 
wonderful things he saw in the trees and the 
meadows, and Tom liked to listen to him, for 
he had forgotten all about them. So in a little 
while they became great friends. 

And I am very glad to say that Tom learned 
such a lesson that day that he did not torment 
creatures for a long time after. And then the 
caddises grew quite tame, and used to tell him 
strange stories about the way they built their 
houses and changed their skins and turned at last 
into winged flies, till Tom began to long to change 
his skin and have wings like them some day. 

[82] 


THE WATER BABIES 


And the trout and he made it up (for trout 
very soon forget, if they have been frightened 
and hurt). So Tom used to play with them at 
hare and hounds, and great fun they had ; and 
he used to try to leap out of the water, head over 
heels, as they did before a shower came on, but 
somehow he never could manage it. He liked 
most, though, to see them rising at the flies, as 
they sailed round and round under the shadow 
of the great oak, where the beetles fell flop into 
the water, and the green caterpillars let them- 
selves down from the boughs by silk ropes for 
no reason at all, and then changed their foolish 
minds for no reason at all either, and hauled 
themselves up again into the tree, rolling up the 
rope in a ball between their paws; which is 
a very clever ropedancer’s trick, and neither 
Blondin nor Leotard could do it, but why they 
should take so much trouble about it no one 
can tell, for they cannot get their living, as 
Blondin and Leotard do, by trying to break their 
necks on a string. 

And very often Tom caught them just as 
they touched the water, and caught the alder 
flies and the caperers and the cock-tailed duns 
and spinners — yellow and brown and claret 
[ 83 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


and gray — and gave them to his friends the 
trout. Perhaps he was not quite kind to the flies, 
but one must do a good turn to one’s friends 
when one can. 

And at last he gave up catching even the flies, 
for he made acquaintance with one by accident 
and found him a very merry little fellow. And 
this was the way it happened, and it is all quite 
true. 

He was basking at the top of the water one 
hot day in July, catching duns and feeding the 
trout, when he saw a new sort, a dark gray little 
fellow with a brown head. He was a very little 
fellow indeed, but he made the most of himself, 
as people ought to do. He cocked up his head, 
and he cocked up his wings, and he cocked up 
his tail, and he cocked up the two whisks at his 
tail-end, and in short he looked the cockiest 
little man of all little men. And so he proved to 
be, for instead of getting away, he hopped upon 
Tom’s finger and sat there as bold as nine 
tailors, and he cried out in the tiniest, shrillest, 
squeakiest little voice you ever heard, " Much 
obliged to you, indeed ; but I don’t want it yet.” 

"Want what?” said Tom, quite taken aback 
by his impudence. 


[ 84 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


"Your leg, which you are kind enough to hold 
out for me to sit on. I must just go and see after 
my wife for a few minutes. Dear me ! what a 
troublesome business a family is ! ” (though the 
idle little rogue did nothing at all, but left his 
poor wife to lay all the eggs by herself). " When 
I come back, I shall be glad of it, if you ’ll be 
so good as to keep it sticking out just so ” ; and 
off he flew. 

Tom thought him a very cool sort of person- 
age, and still more so when in five minutes he 
came back and said : " Ah, you were tired wait- 
ing? Well, your other leg will do as well.” 

And he popped himself down on Tom’s knee 
and began chatting away in his squeaking voice. 

"So you live under the water? It’s a low 
place. I lived there for some time and was 
very shabby and dirty. But I did n’t choose 
that that should last, so I turned respectable 
and came up to the top and put on this gray 
suit. It’s a very businesslike suit, you think, 
don’t you ? ” 

"Very neat and quiet indeed,” said Tom. 

"Yes, one must be quiet, and neat, and re- 
spectable, and all that sort of thing for a little, 
when one becomes a family man. But I ’m 
[ 85 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


tired of it, that ’s the truth. I ’ve done quite 
enough business, I consider, in the last week 
to last me my life. So I shall put on a ball 
dress, and go out and be a smart man, and see 
the gay world, and have a dance or two. Why 
should n’t one be jolly if one caii ? ” 

" And what will become of your wife ? ” 

" Oh ! she is a very plain, stupid creature, 
and that ’s the truth, and thinks about nothing 
but eggs. If she chooses to come, why, she 
may ; and if not, why, I go without her — and 
here I go.” 

And as he spoke he turned quite pale, and 
then quite white. 

" Why, you’re ill!” said Tom. But he did 
not answer. 

“ You ’re dead,” said Tom, looking at him as 
he stood on his knee, as white as a ghost. 

" No, I ain’t ! ” answered a little squeaking 
voice over his head. " This is me up here, in 
my ball dress; and that’s my skin. Ha, ha! 
you could not do such a trick as that ! ” 

And no more Tom could, nor Houdin, nor 
Robin, nor Frikell, nor all the conjurers in the 
world. For the little rogue had jumped clean 
out of his own skin and left it standing on 
[ 86 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

Tom’s knee — eyes, wings, legs, tail, exactly as 
if it had been alive. 

" Ha, ha!” he said, and he jerked and skipped 
up and down, never stopping an instant, just 
as if he had St. Vitus’s dance. "Ain’t I a 
pretty fellow now ? ” 

And so he was. For his body was white, 
and his tail orange, and his eyes all the colors 
of a peacock’s tail ; and, what was the oddest 
of all, the whisks at the end of his tail had 
grown five times as long as they were before. 

"Ah!” said he, "now I will see the gay world. 
My living won’t cost me much, for I have no 
mouth, you see, and no inside ; so I can never 
be hungry, nor have the stomach ache, neither.” 

No more he had. He had grown as dry and 
hard and empty as a quill, as such silly, shallow- 
hearted fellows deserve to grow. 

But instead of being ashamed of his empti- 
ness, he was quite proud of it, as a good many 
fine gentlemen are, and began flirting and 
flipping up and down and singing, 

" My wife shall dance, and I shall sing, 

So merrily pass the day ; 

For I hold it one of the wisest things, 

To drive dull care away.” 

[ 87 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


And he danced up and down for three days 
and three nights, till he grew so tired that he 
tumbled into the water and floated down. But 
what became of him Tom never knew, and he 
himself never minded, for Tom heard him sing- 
ing to the last, as he floated down, 

" To drive dull care away-ay-ay ! ” 

And if he did not care, why, nobody else cared 
either. 

But one day Tom had a new adventure. He 
was sitting on a water-lily leaf, he and his friend 
the dragon fly, watching the gnats dance. The 
dragon fly had eaten as many as he wanted, 
and was sitting quite still and sleepy, for it was 
very hot and bright. The gnats (who did not 
care the least for their poor brothers’ deaths) 
danced a foot over his head quite happily, and 
a large black fly settled within an inch of his 
nose, and began washing his own face and 
combing his hair with his paws; but the dragon 
fly never stirred, and kept on chatting to Tom 
about the times when he lived under the water. 

Suddenly Tom heard the strangest noise up 
the stream — cooing and grunting and whining 
and squeaking, as if you had put into a bag two 
[ 88 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


stockdoves, nine mice, three guinea pigs, and a 
blind puppy, and left them there to settle them- 
selves and make music. 

He looked up the water, and there he saw a 
sight as strange as the noise: a great ball roll- 
ing over and over down the stream, seeming 
one moment of soft brown fur and the next of 
shining glass; and yet it was not a ball, for some- 
times it broke up and streamed away in pieces, 
and then it joined again ; and all the while the 
noise came out of it louder and louder. 

Tom asked the dragon fly what it could be, 
but of course, with his short sight, he could not 
even see it, though it was not ten yards away. 
So he took the neatest little header into the 
water, and started off to see for himself; and 
when he came near, the ball turned out to be 
four or five beautiful creatures, many times 
larger than Tom, who were swimming about 
and rolling and diving and twisting and wres- 
tling and cuddling and kissing and biting and 
scratching in the most charming fashion that 
ever was seen. And if you don’t believe me, you 
may go to the Zoological Gardens, and then say 
if otters at play in the water are not the merriest, 
lithest, gracefulest creatures you ever saw. 

[ 89 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


But when the biggest of them saw Tom, 
she darted out from the rest and cried in the 
water language, sharply enough, " Quick, chil- 
dren ; here is something to eat, indeed ! ” and 
came at poor Tom, showing such a wicked pair 
of eyes, and such a set of sharp teeth in a 
grinning mouth, that Tom, who had thought 
her very handsome, said to himself, " Handsome 
is that handsome does,” and slipped in between 
the water-lily roots as fast as he could, and then 
turned round and made faces at her. 

" Come out,” said the wicked old otter, " or it 
will be worse for you.” 

But Tom looked at her from between two 
thick roots and shook them with all his might, 
making horrible faces all the while, just as he 
used to grin through the railings at the old 
women, when he lived before. It was not quite 
well-bred, no doubt; but you know Tom had 
not finished his education yet. 

" Come away, children,” said the otter in dis- 
gust; " it is not worth eating, after all. It is 
only a nasty eft, which nothing eats, not even 
those vulgar pike in the pond.” 

"I am not an eft!” said Tom. " Efts have 
tails.” 


[ 90 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

"You are an eft,” said the otter, very posi- 
tively. " I see your two hands quite plain, and 
I know you have a tail.” 

" I tell you I have not,” said Tom. " Look 
here ! ” and he turned his pretty little self quite 
round ; and, sure enough, he had not. 

The otter might have got out of it by saying 
that Tom was a frog; but, like a great many 
other people, when she had once said a thing, 
she stood to it, right or wrong ; so she answered : 
" I say you are an eft, and therefore you are, 
and not fit food for gentlefolk like me and my 
children. You may stay there till the salmon 
eat you ” (she knew the salmon would not, but 
she wanted to frighten poor Tom). " Ha, ha! 
they will eat you, and we will eat them ! ” and 
the otter laughed such a wicked, cruel laugh as 
you may hear them do sometimes; and the first 
time that you hear it you will probably think 
it is bogies. 

"What are salmon?” asked Tom. 

" Fish, you eft ! — great fish, nice fish to eat. 
They are the lords of the fish, and we are the 
lords of the salmon ” ; and she laughed again. 
"We hunt them up and down the pools and 
drive them up into a corner, the silly things; 

[9i] 


THE WATER BABIES 


they are so proud, and they bully the little trout 
and the minnows, till they see us coming, and 
then they are so meek all at once, and we catch 
them ; but we disdain to eat them all ; we only 
bite out their soft throats and suck their sweet 
juice — Oh, so good ! ” (and she licked her wicked 
lips) — " and then throw them away and go and 
catch another. They are coming soon, children, 
coming soon ; I can smell the rain coming up 
off the sea; and then hurrah for a fresh, soft 
salmon and plenty of eating all day long ! ” 

And the otter grew so proud that she turned 
head over heels twice, and then stood upright half 
out of the water, grinning like a Cheshire cat. 

" And where do they come from ? ” asked 
Tom, who kept himself very close, for he was 
considerably frightened. 

" Out of the sea, eft, the great, wide sea, where 
they might stay and be safe if they liked. But 
out of the sea the silly things come, into the 
great river down below, and we come up to 
watch for them ; and when they go down again, 
we go down and follow them. And there we fish 
for the bass and the pollack, and have jolly days 
along the shore, and toss and roll in the breakers, 
and sleep snug in the warm, dry crags. Ah, that 
[ 92 ], 


THE WATER BABIES 

is a merry life, too, children, if it were not for 
those horrid men.” 

"What are men?” asked Tom, but somehow 
he seemed to know before he asked. 

" T wo-legged things, eft ; and, now I come to 
look at you, they are actually something like you, 
if you had not a tail ” (she was determined that 
Tom should have a tail), "only a great deal 
bigger, worse luck for us ! and they catch the 
fish with hooks and lines, which get into our feet 
sometimes, and set pots along the rocks to catch 
lobsters. They speared my poor dear husband as 
he went out to find something for me to eat. 
I was laid up among the crags then, and we were 
very low in the world, for the sea was so rough 
that no fish would come in shore. But they 
speared him, poor fellow! and I saw them carry- 
ing him away upon a pole. Ah, he lost his life 
for your sakes, my children, poor, dear, obedient 
creature that he was.” 

Then the otter sailed solemnly away down the 
burn, and Tom saw her no more for that time. 
And lucky it was for her that she did so, for no 
sooner was she gone than down the bank came 
seven little rough terrier dogs, snuffing and 
yapping and grubbing and splashing, in full cry 
[ 93 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

after the otter. Tom hid among the water lilies 
till they were gone, for he could not guess that 
they were the water fairies come to help him. 

But he could not help thinking of what the 
otter had said about the great river and the 
broad sea. And as he thought, he longed to go 
and see them. He could not tell why, but the 
more he thought, the more he grew discontented 
with the narrow little stream in which he lived, 
and all his companions there, and wanted to get 
out into the wide, wide world and enjoy all the 
wonderful sights of which he was sure it was full. 

And once he set off to go down the stream ; 
but the stream was very low, and when he came 
to the shallows he could not keep under water, 
for there was no water left to keep under. So the 
sun burned his back and made him sick, and he 
went back again and lay quiet in the pool for a 
whole week more. 

And then, on the evening of a very hot day, 
he saw a sight. 

He had been very stupid all day, and so had 
the trout, for they would not move an inch to 
take a fly, though there were thousands on the 
water, but lay dozing at the bottom under the 
shade of the stones; and Tom lay dozing, too, 
[ 94 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

and was glad to cuddle their smooth, cool sides, 
for the water was quite warm and unpleasant. 

But toward evening it grew suddenly dark, 
and Tom looked up and saw a blanket of black 
clouds lying right across the valley above his 
head, resting on the crags right and left. He felt 
not quite frightened but very still, for everything 
was still. There was not a whisper of wind nor a 
chirp of a bird to be heard, and next a few great 
drops of rain fell plop into the water, and one hit 
Tom on the nose and made him pop his head 
down quickly enough. 

And then the thunder roared, and the light- 
ning flashed, and leaped across Vendale and back 
again, from cloud to cloud. and cliff to cliff, till 
the very rocks in the stream seemed to shake, 
and Tom looked up at it through the water 
and thought it the finest thing he ever saw in 
his life. 

But out of the water he dared not put his head, 
for the rain came down by bucketfuls, and the hail 
hammered like shot on the stream and churned 
it into foam ; and the stream rose and rushed 
down, higher and higher and fouler and fouler, 
full of beetles, and sticks, and straws, and worms, 
and addle-eggs, and wood lice, and leeches, and 
[ 95 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

odds and ends, and this, that, and the other, 
enough to fill nine museums. 

Tom could hardly stand against the stream, 
and hid behind a rock. But the trout did not, 
for out they rushed from among the stones and 
began gobbling the beetles and leeches in the 
most greedy and quarrelsome way, and swim- 
ming about with great worms hanging out of 
their mouths, tugging and kicking to get them 
away from each other. 

And now, by the flashes of the lightning, Tom 
saw a new sight — all the bottom of the stream 
alive with great eels, turning and twisting along, 
all downstream and away. They had been hiding 
for weeks past in the cracks of the rocks and in 
burrows in the mud, and Tom had hardly ever 
seen them, except now and then at night ; but 
now they were all out, and went hurrying past 
him so fiercely and wildly that he was quite 
frightened. And as they hurried past he could 
hear them say to each other, "We must run, we 
must run. What a jolly thunderstorm ! Down to 
the sea ! Down to the sea ! ” 

And then the otter came by with all her brood, 
twining and sweeping along as fast as the eels 
themselves ; and she spied Tom as he came by 
[ 96 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

and said: "Now is your time, eft, if you want to 
see the world. Come along, children ; never mind 
those nasty eels ; we shall breakfast on salmon 
to-morrow. Down to the sea ! Down to the sea ! ” 

Then came a flash brighter than all the rest, 
and by the light of it — in the thousandth part 
of a second they were gone again ; but he had 
seen them, he was certain of it — three beautiful 
little white girls, with their arms twined round 
each other’s necks, floating down the torrent 
as they sang, " Down to the sea ! Down to 
the sea ! ” 

"Oh, stay! Wait for me!” cried Tom; but 
they were gone. Yet he could hear their voices, 
clear and sweet through the roar of thunder 
and water and wind, singing as they died away, 
" Down to the sea ! ” 

"Down to the sea?” said Tom; "everything 
is going to the sea, and I will go too. Good- 
by, trout.” But the trout were so busy gob- 
bling worms that they never turned to answer 
him, so that Tom was spared the pain of bidding 
them farewell. 

And now, down the rushing stream, guided 
by the bright flashes of the storm; past tall, 
birch-fringed rocks, which shone out one moment 
[ 97 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


as clear as day, and the next were dark as night ; 
past dark hovers under swirling banks, from 
which great trout rushed out on Tom, thinking 
him to be good to eat, and turned back sulkily, 
for the fairies sent them home again with a tre- 
mendous scolding for daring to meddle with a 
water baby; on through narrow strids and roar- 
ing cataracts, where Tom was deafened and 
blinded for a moment by the rushing waters; 
along deep reaches, where the white water lilies 
tossed and flapped beneath the wind and hail ; 
past sleeping villages; under dark bridge arches, 
and away and away to the sea. And Tom could 
not stop, and did not care to stop ; he would see 
the great world below, and the salmon, and the 
breakers, and the wide, wide sea. 

And when the daylight came, Tom found him- 
self out in the salmon river. A full hundred 
yards broad it was, sliding on from broad pool to 
broad shallow, and broad shallow to broad pool, 
over great fields of shingle, under oak and ash 
coverts, past low cliffs of sandstone, past green 
meadows, and fair parks, and a great house of 
gray stone, and brown moors above, and here 
and there against the sky the smoking chimney 
of a colliery. 


[ 98 ] 



THE WATER BABIES 

And after a while he came to a place where 
the river spread out into broad, still, shallow 
reaches, so wide that little Tom, as he put his 
head out of the water, could hardly see across. 

And there he stopped. He got a little fright- 
ened. " This must be the sea,” he thought. 
" What a wide place it is. If I go on into it, I 
shall surely lose my way, or some strange thing 
will bite me. I will stop here and look out for 
the otter or the eels or someone to tell me 
where I shall go.” 

So he went back a little way and crept into a 
crack of the rock, just where the river opened out 
into the wide shallows, and watched for someone 
to tell him his way; but the otter and the eels 
were gone on miles and miles down the stream. 

There he waited, and slept too, for he was 
quite tired with his night’s journey, and when he 
woke, the stream was clearing to a beautiful 
amber hue, though it was still very high. And 
after a while he saw a sight which made him 
jump up, for he knew in a moment it was one of 
the things which he had come to look for. 

Such a fish! ten times as big as the biggest 
trout and a hundred times as big as Tom, scull- 
ing upstream as easily as Tom had sculled down, 
[ioo] 


THE WATER BABIES 

Such a fish as it was ! shining silver from 
head to tail, and here and there a crimson dot; 
with a grand hooked nose and grand curling lip, 
and a grand bright eye, looking round him as 
proudly as a king, and surveying the water right 
and left as if it all belonged to him. Surely he 
must be the salmon, the king of all the fish. 

Tom was so frightened that he longed to creep 
into a hole, but he need not have been, for 
salmon are all true gentlemen, and, like true gen- 
tlemen, they look noble and proud enough, and 
yet, like true gentlemen, they never harm or 
quarrel with anyone, but go about their own 
business and leave rude fellows to themselves. 

The salmon looked him full in the face and 
then went on without minding him, with a switch 
or two of his tail which made the stream boil 
again. And in a few minutes came another, and 
then four or five, and so on; and all passed Tom, 
rushing and plunging up the cataract with strong 
strokes of their silver tails, now and then leaping 
clean out of water and up over a rock, shining 
gloriously for a moment in the bright sun, while 
Tom was so delighted that he could have 
watched them all day long. 

And at last one came up, bigger than all the 

[ioi] 


THE WATER BABIES 


rest, but he came slowly, and stopped and looked 
back, and seemed very anxious and busy. And 
Tom saw that he was helping another salmon, an 
especially handsome one, who had not a single 
spot upon it, but was clothed in pure silver from 
nose to tail. 

" My dear,” said the great fish to his compan- 
ion, "you really look dreadfully tired, and you 
must not overexert yourself at first. Do rest 
yourself behind this rock ” — and he shoved her 
gently with his nose to the rock where Tom sat. 

You must know that this was the salmon’s 
wife, for salmon, like other true gentlemen, 
always choose their lady, and love her, and are 
true to her, and take care of her, and work for 
her, and fight for her, as every true gentleman 
ought, and are not like vulgar chub and roach 
and pike, who have no high feelings and take 
no care of their wives. 

Then he saw Tom and looked at him very 
fiercely one moment, as if he was going to 
bite him. 

"What do you want here?” he said very 
fiercely. 

"Oh, don’t hurt me!” cried Tom. "I only 
want to look at you ; you are so handsome.” 

[ 102 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

" Ah ! ” said the salmon, very stately but very 
civilly. " I really beg your pardon ; I see what 
you are, my little dear. I have met one or two 
creatures like you before, and found them very 
agreeable and well-behaved. Indeed, one of them 
showed me a great kindness lately, which I hope 
to be able to repay. I hope we shall not be in 
your way here. As soon as this lady is rested, we 
shall proceed on our journey.” 

What a well-bred old salmon he was ! 

" So you have seen things like me before ? ” 
asked Tom. 

" Several times, my dear. Indeed, it was only 
last night that one at the river’s mouth came and 
warned me and my wife of some new stake nets 
which had got into the stream (I cannot tell how) 
since last winter, and showed us the way round 
them in the most charmingly obliging way.” 

"So there are babies in the sea?” cried Tom, 
and clapped his little hands. " Then I shall have 
someone to play with there ? How delightful ! ” 

"Were there no babies up this stream?” asked 
the lady salmon. 

"No; and I grew so lonely. I thought I saw 
three last night, but they were gone in an in- 
stant, down to the sea. So I went too, for I had 
[ IQ 3 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


nothing to play with but caddises and dragon 
flies and trout.” 

" Ugh I ” cried the lady, " what low company ! ” 

" My dear, if he has been in low company, he 
has certainly not learned their low manners,” said 
the salmon. 

“No, indeed, poor little dear! but how sad for 
him to live among such people as caddises, who 
have actually six legs ! and dragon flies too ! 
Why, they are not even good to eat, for I tried 
them once, and they are all hard and empty ; and 
as for trout, everyone knows what they are.” 
Whereon she curled up her lip and looked dread- 
fully scornful, while her husband curled up his, 
too, till he looked as proud as Alcibiades. 

w Why do you dislike the trout so ? ” asked 
Tom. 

" My dear, we do not even mention them if we 
can help it, for I am sorry to say they are rela- 
tions of ours who do us no credit. A great many 
years ago they were just like us, but they were 
so lazy and cowardly and greedy that instead of 
going down to the sea every year to see the 
world and grow strong and fat, they chose to 
stay and poke about in the little streams and eat 
worms and grubs; and they are very properly 
[ io 4 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

punished for it, for they have grown ugly and 
brown and spotted and small, and are actually 
so degraded in their tastes that they will eat 
our children.” 

" And then they pretend to scrape acquaint- 
ance with us again,” said the lady. " Why, I have 
actually known one of them propose to a lady 
salmon, the impudent little creature ! ” 

" I should hope,” said the gentleman, " that 
there are very few ladies of our race who would 
degrade themselves by listening to such a crea- 
ture for an instant. If I saw such a thing happen, 
I should consider it my duty to put them both to 
death upon the spot.” So the old salmon said, 
like an old blue-blooded hidalgo of Spain ; and 
what is more, he would have done it, too. For 
you must know, no enemies are so bitter against 
each other as those who are of the same race, and 
a salmon looks on a trout as some great folks 
look on some little folks — as something just too 
much like himself to be tolerated. 


[io5] 



CHAPTER IV 


0 THE salmon went up, after Tom had 



warned them of the wicked old otter, and 


Tom went down, but slowly and cautiously, 
coasting along the shore. He was many days 
about it, for it was many miles down to the sea, 
and perhaps he would never have found his way 
if the fairies had not guided him, without his see- 
ing their fair faces or feeling their gentle hands. 

And as he went he had a very strange adven- 
ture. It was a clear, still September night, and 
the moon shone so brightly down through the 
water that he could not sleep, though he shut 
his eyes as tight as possible. So at last he came 
up to the top and sat upon a little point of rock 
and looked up at the broad yellow moon and 
wondered what she was, and thought that she 


[ iq 6 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


looked at him. And he watched the moonlight 
on the rippling river, and the black heads of 
the firs, and the silver-frosted lawns, and listened 
to the owl’s hoot and the snipe’s bleat and the 
fox’s bark and the otter’s laugh, and smelled the 
soft perfume of the birches and the wafts of 
heather honey off the grouse moor far above, 
and felt very happy, though he could not well 
tell why. You, of course, would have been very 
cold sitting there on a September night without 
the least bit of clothes on your wet back, but 
Tom was a water baby, and therefore felt cold 
no more than a fish. 

Suddenly he saw a beautiful sight. A bright 
red light moved along the riverside and threw 
down into the water a long taproot of flame. 
Tom, curious little rogue that he was, must 
needs go and see what it was ; so he swam to 
the shore and met the light as it stopped over 
a shallow run at the edge of a low rock. 

And there, underneath the light, lay five or 
six great salmon, looking up at the flame with 
their great goggle eyes and wagging their tails 
as if they were very much pleased at it. 

Tom came to the top to look at this wonderful 
light nearer, and made a splash. 

[ lo 7 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


And he heard a voice say, " There was a fish.” 

He did not know what the words meant, but 
he seemed to know the sound of them, and to 
know the voice which spoke them, and he saw 
on the bank three great two-legged creatures, 
one of whom held the light, flaring and sputter- 
ing, and another a long pole. And he knew 
that they were men, and was frightened and 
crept into a hole in the rock, from which he 
could see what went on. 

The man with the torch bent down over the 
water and looked earnestly in, and then he said, 
"Tak that muckle fellow, lad; he’s ower fifteen 
punds ; and haud your hand steady.” 

Tom felt that there was some danger coming, 
and longed to warn the foolish salmon, who 
kept staring up at the light as if he was be- 
witched. But before he could make up his mind, 
down came the pole through the water; there 
was a fearful splash and struggle, and Tom 
saw that the poor salmon was speared right 
through and was lifted out of the water. 

And then from behind there sprung on these 
three men three other men, and there were 
shouts and blows and words which Tom recol- 
lected to have heard before, and he shuddered 
[108] 


THE WATER BABIES 

and turned sick at them now, for he felt some- 
how that they were strange and ugly and wrong 
and horrible. And it all began to come back 
to him. They were men, and they were fighting 
— savage, desperate, up-and-down fighting, such 
as Tom had seen too many times before. 

And he stopped his little ears and longed to 
swim away, and was very glad that he was a 
water baby and had nothing to do any more 
with horrid, dirty men, with foul clothes on 
their backs and foul words on their lips; but 
he dared not stir out of his hole; while the rock 
shook over his head with the trampling and 
struggling of the keepers and the poachers. 

All of a sudden there was a tremendous 
splash, and a frightful flash, and a hissing, and 
all was still. 

For into the water, close to Tom, fell one of 
the men — he who held the light in his hand. 
Into the swift river he sank, and rolled over and 
over in the current. Tom heard the men above 
run along, seemingly looking for him, but he 
drifted down into the deep hole below, and there 
lay quite still, and they could not find him. 

Tom waited a long time, till all was quiet, and 
then he peeped out and saw the man lying. At 
[ io 9 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

last he screwed up his courage and swam down 
to him. " Perhaps,” he thought, " the water has 
made him fall asleep, as it did me.” 

Then he went nearer. He grew more and 
more curious, he could not tell why. He must 
go and look at him. He would go very quietly, 
of course; so he swam round and round him, 
closer and closer; and, as he did not stir, at 
last he came quite close and looked him in 
the face. 

The moon shone so bright that Tom could 
see every feature ; and as he saw he recollected, 
bit by bit. It was his old master, Grimes. 

Tom turned tail and swam away as fast as 
he could. 

"Oh, dear me!” he thought, "now he will 
turn into a water baby. What a troublesome 
one he will be ! And perhaps he will find me 
out and beat me again.” 

So he went up the river again a little way, 
and lay there the rest of the night under an 
alder root; but when morning came, he longed 
to go down again to the big pool and see whether 
Mr. Grimes had turned into a water baby yet. 

So he went very carefully, peeping round all the 
rocks and hiding under all the roots. Mr. Grimes 
[no] 


THE WATER BABIES 


lay there still ; he had not turned into a water 
baby. In the afternoon Tom went back again. 
He could not rest till he had found out what 
had become of Mr. Grimes. But this time Mr. 
Grimes was gone, and Tom made up his mind 
that he was turned into a water baby. 

He might have made himself easy, poor little 
man; Mr. Grimes did not turn into a water baby 
or anything like one at all. But he did not make 
himself easy, and a long time he was fearful lest 
he should meet Grimes suddenly in some deep 
pool. He could not know that the fairies had 
carried him away and put him where they put 
everything which falls into the water, exactly 
where it ought to be. 

Then Tom went on down, for he was afraid 
of staying near Grimes; and as he went all the 
vale looked sad. The red and yellow leaves 
showered down into the river; the flies and 
beetles were all dead and gone ; the chill autumn 
fog lay low upon the hills, and sometimes spread 
itself so thickly on the river that he could not 
see his way. But he felt his way instead, follow- 
ing the flow of the stream, day after day, past 
great bridges, past boats and barges, past the 
great town, with its wharves and mills and tall, 
[in] 


THE WATER BABIES 


smoking chimneys, and ships which rode at 
anchor in the stream ; and now and then he 
ran against their hawsers and wondered what 
they were, and peeped out and saw the sailors 
lounging on board, smoking their pipes, and 
ducked under again, for he was terribly afraid 
of being caught by man and turned into a 
chimney sweep once more. He did not know 
that the fairies were close to him always, shut- 
ting the sailors’ eyes lest they should see him, and 
turning him aside from mill races and sewer 
mouths and all foul and dangerous things. Poor 
little fellow, it was a dreary journey for him, and 
more than once he longed to be back in Vendale, 
playing with the trout in the bright summer 
sun. But it could not be. What has been once 
can never come over again, and people can be 
little babies, even water babies, only once in 
their lives. 

Besides, people who make up their minds to 
go and see the world, as Tom did, must needs 
find it a weary journey. Lucky for them if they 
do not lose heart and stop halfway, instead of 
going on bravely to the end, as Tom did. 

But Tom was always a brave, determined little 
English bulldog, who never knew when he was 
[ 1 1 2 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


beaten, and on and on he held till he saw, a long 
way off, the red buoy through the fog. And 
then he found, to his surprise, the stream turned 
round and running up inland. 

It was the tide, of course, but Tom knew 
nothing of the tide. He only knew that in a 
minute more the water, which had been fresh, 
turned salt all round him. And then there came 
a change over him. He felt as strong and light 
and fresh as if his veins had run champagne, 
and gave, he did not know why, three skips out 
of the water, a yard highland head over heels, 
just as the salmon do when they first touch the 
noble, rich salt water, which, as some wise men 
tell us, is the mother of all living things. 

He did not care now for the tide being 
against him. The red buoy was in sight, danc- 
ing in the open sea, and to the buoy he would 
go, and to it he went. He passed great shoals 
of bass and mullet, leaping and rushing in after 
the shrimps, but he never heeded them or they 
him ; and once he passed a great, black, shining 
seal, who was coming in after the mullet. The 
seal put his head and shoulders out of the water 
and stared at him. And Tom, instead of being 
frightened, said, "How d’ye do, sir? What a 
[” 3 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

beautiful place the sea is ! ” And the old seal, 
instead of trying to bite him, looked at him with 
his soft, sleepy, winking eyes and said, " Good 
tide to you, my little man ; are you looking for 
your brothers and sisters ? I passed them all 
at play outside.” 

"Oh, then,” said Tom, "I shall have play- 
fellows at last ! ” and he swam on to the buoy 
and got upon it (for he was quite out of breath) 
and sat there and looked round for water babies, 
but there were none to be seen. 

The sea breeze came in freshly with the tide 
and blew the fog away, and the little waves' 
danced for joy around the buoy, and the old 
buoy danced with them. The shadows of the 
clouds ran races over the bright blue bay, and 
yet never caught each other up ; and the breakers 
plunged merrily upon the wide white sands, and 
jumped over the rocks to see what the green 
fields inside were like, and tumbled down and 
broke themselves all to pieces, and never minded 
it a bit, but mended themselves and jumped up 
again. And the terns hovered over Tom like 
huge white dragon flies with black heads; and 
the gulls laughed like girls at play ; and the sea 
pies, with their red bills and legs, flew to and 
[ 1 1 4 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


fro from shore to shore and whistled* sweet and 
wild. And Tom looked and looked and listened, 
and he would have been very happy if he could 
only have seen the water babies. Then, when 
the tide turned, he left the buoy and swam 
round and round in search of them, but in vain. 
Sometimes he thought he heard them laughing, 
but it was only the laughter of the ripples. And 
sometimes he thought he saw them at the bot- 
tom, but it was only white and pink shells. And 
once he was sure he had found one, for he saw 
two bright eyes peeping out of the sand. So he 
dived down and began scraping the sand away, 
and cried, " Don’t hide ; I do want someone to 
play with so much ! ” And out jumped a great 
turbot, with his ugly eyes and mouth all awry, 
and flopped away along the bottom, knocking 
poor Tom over. And he sat down at the bot- 
tom of the sea and cried salt tears from sheer 
disappointment. 

To have come all this way, and faced so many 
dangers, and yet to find no water babies ! How 
hard ! Well, it did seem hard ; but people, even 
little babies, cannot have all they want without 
waiting for it, and working for it, too, as you 
will find out some day. 

r 1 1 5 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

And Tom sat upon the buoy long days, long 
weeks, looking out to sea and wondering when 
the water babies would come back ; and yet they 
never came. 

Then he began to ask all the strange things 
which came in out of the sea if they had seen 
any, and some of them said " yes” and some 
said nothing at all. 

He asked the bass and the pollack, but they 
were so greedy after the shrimps that they did 
not care to answer him a word. 

Then there came in a whole fleet of purple 
sea snails, floating along, each on a sponge full 
of foam; and Tom said, "Where do you come 
from, you pretty creatures? and have you seen 
the water babies ? ” 

And the sea snails answered, " Whence we 
come, we know not ; and whither we are going, 
who can tell? We float out our little life in the 
mid-ocean, with the warm sunshine above our 
heads and the warm Gulf Stream below ; and that 
is enough for us. Yes, perhaps we have seen 
the water babies. We have seen many strange 
things as we sailed along.” And they floated 
away, the happy, stupid things, and all went 
ashore upon the sands. 

[u6] 


THE WATER BABIES 


Then there came in a great, lazy sunfish, as 
big as a fat pig cut in half; and he seemed to 
have been cut in half, too, and squeezed in a 
clothespress till he was flat ; but to all his big 
body and big fins he had only a little rabbit’s 
mouth, no bigger than Tom’s; and when Tom 
questioned him, he answered in a little squeaky, 
feeble voice : "I’m sure I don’t know ; I ’ve lost 
my way. I meant to go to the Chesapeake, and 
I ’m afraid I ’ve got wrong somehow. Dear me ! 
it was all by following that pleasant warm water. 
I ’m sure I ’ve lost my way.” 

And when Tom asked him again, he could 
only answer : " I ’ve lost my way. Don’t talk to 
me; I want to think.” 

But, like a good many other people, the more 
he tried to think, the less he could think; and 
Tom saw him blundering about all day, till the 
coast guardsmen saw his big fin above the water, 
and rowed out and struck a boat hook into him 
and took him away. They took him up to the 
town and showed him for a penny a head, and 
made a good day’s work of it; but of course Tom 
did not know that. 

Then there came by a shoal of porpoises, 
rolling as they went, — papas and mammas and 
[H7] 


THE WATER BABIES 


little children, — and all quite smooth and shiny, 
because the fairies French-polish them every 
morning ; and they sighed so softly as they came 
by that Tom took courage to speak to them, but 
all they answered was, " Hush, hush, hush!” for 
that was all they had learned to say. 

And then there came a shoal of basking 
sharks, some of them as long as a boat, and Tom 
was frightened at them. But they were very lazy, 
good-natured fellows, not greedy tyrants, like 
white sharks and blue sharks and ground sharks 
and hammerheads, who eat men, or sawfish and 
thrashers and ice sharks, who hunt the poor old 
whales. They came and rubbed their great sides 
against the buoy, and lay basking in the sun with 
their back fins out of water, and winked at Tom ; 
but he never could get them to speak. They had 
eaten so many herrings that they were quite 
stupid, and Tom was glad when a collier brig 
came by and frightened them all away, for they 
did smell most horribly, certainly, and he had to 
hold his nose tight as long as they were there. 

And then there came by a beautiful creature 
like a ribbon of pure silver, with a sharp head and 
very long teeth, but it seemed very sick and sad. 
Sometimes it rolled helpless on its side, and then 
[ 1 1 8 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


dashed away, glittering like white fire ; and then 
it lay sick again and motionless. 

" Where do you come from?” asked Tom. 
" And why are you so sick and sad ? ” 

" I come from the warm Carolinas, and the 
sand banks fringed with pines, where the great 
owl-rays leap and flap, like giant bats, upon the 
tide. But I wandered north and north upon 
the treacherous warm Gulf Stream, till I met 
with the cold icebergs, afloat in the mid-ocean. 
So I got tangled among the icebergs and 
chilled with their frozen breath. But the water 
babies helped me from among them and set 
me free again. And now I am mending every 
day; but I am very sick and sad, and perhaps 
I shall never get home again to play with the 
owl-rays any more.” 

" Oh ! ” cried Tom. " And you have seen water 
babies? Have you seen any near here?” 

"Yes; they helped me again last night, or 
I should have been eaten by a great black 
porpoise.” 

How vexatious ! The water babies close to 
him, and yet he could not find one. 

And then he left the buoy, and used to go 
along the sands and round the rocks, and come 
[ 1 19] 


THE WATER BABIES 


out in the night and sit upon a point of rock 
among the shining seaweeds, in the low October 
tides, and cry and call for the water babies ; 
but he never heard a voice call in return. And 
at last, with his fretting and crying, he grew 
quite lean and thin. 

But one day among the rocks he found a 
playfellow. It was not a water baby, alas! but 
it was a lobster; and a very distinguished lob- 
ster he was, for he had live barnacles on his 
claws, which is a great mark of distinction in 
lobsterdom, and no more to be bought for 
money than a good conscience or the Victoria 
Cross. 

Tom had never seen a lobster before, and he 
was mightily taken with this one, for he thought 
him the most curious, odd, ridiculous creature 
he had ever seen; and there he was not far 
wrong, for all the ingenious men, and all the 
scientific men, and all the fanciful men, in the 
world, with all the old German bogy painters 
into the bargain, could never invent, if all their 
wits were boiled into one, anything so curious, 
and so ridiculous, as a lobster. 

He had one. claw knobbed and the other 
jagged, and Tom delighted in watching him 
[ 120 ] 



THE WATER BABIES 

hold on to the seaweed with his knobbed claw 
while he cut up salads with his jagged one, and 
then put them into his mouth, after smelling at 
them like a monkey. And always the little 
barnacles threw out their casting nets and 
swept the water, and came in for their share of 
whatever there was for dinner. 

But Tom was most astonished to see how 
he fired himself off — snap! like the leapfrogs 
which you make out of a goose’s breastbone. 
Certainly he took the most wonderful shots, and 
backwards, too. For if he wanted to go into a 
narrow crack ten yards . off, what do you think 
he did? If he had gone in head foremost, of 
course he could not have turned round. So he 
used to turn his tail to it and lay his long 
horns, which carry his sixth sense in their tips 
(and nobody knows what that sixth sense is), 
straight down his back to guide him, and twist 
his eyes back till they almost came out of their 
sockets, and then made ready, present, fire, snap ! 
— and away he went, pop into the hole, and 
peeped out and twiddled his whiskers, as much 
as to say, "You couldn’t do that.” 

Tom asked him about water babies. Yes, 
he said, he had seen them often, but he did 
[ 122 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

not think much of them. They were meddle- 
some little creatures that went about helping 
fish and shells which got into scrapes. Well, for 
his part, he should be ashamed to be helped by 
little soft creatures that had not even a shell on 
their backs. He had lived quite long enough 
in the world to take care of himself. 

He was a conceited fellow, the old lobster, 
and not very civil to Tom; and you will hear 
how he had to alter his mind before he was 
done, as conceited people generally have. But 
he was so funny, and Tom so lonely, that he 
could not quarrel with him, and they used to 
sit in holes in the rocks and chat for hours. 

And about this time there happened to Tom 
a very strange and important adventure — so 
important, indeed, that he was very near never 
finding the water babies at all ; and I am sure 
you would have been sorry for that. 

I hope that you have not forgotten the little 
white lady all this while. At least, here she 
comes, looking like a clean, white, good little 
darling, as she always was and always will be. 
For it befell in the pleasant December days 
that Sir John was so busy hunting that nobody 
at home could get a word out of him. Four 
[ I2 3 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

days a week he hunted, and very good sport 
he had; and the other two he went to the 
bench and the board of guardians, and very 
good justice he did; and Sir John, hunting all 
day and dining at five, fell asleep every evening, 
and snored so terribly that all the windows in 
Harthover shook and the soot fell down the 
chimneys. Whereon my lady, being no more 
able to get conversation out of him than a 
song out of a dead nightingale, determined to 
go off and leave him and the doctor and Cap- 
tain Swinger, the agent, to snore in concert 
every evening to their hearts’ content. So she 
started for the seaside with all the children. 

Where she went to nobody must know, for 
fear young ladies should begin to fancy that 
there are water babies there, and so hunt and 
hawk after them and keep them in aquariums, 
as the ladies at Pompeii (as you may see by 
the paintings) used to keep Cupids in cages. 
So nobody must know where my lady went. 

Now it befell that, on the very shore and over 
the very rocks where Tom was sitting with his 
friend the lobster, there walked one day the little 
white lady, Elbe herself, and with her a very wise 
man indeed — Professor Ptthmllnsprts. 

[ I2 4 ] 




THE WATER BABIES 


He was a very worthy, kind, good-natured little 
old gentleman, and very fond of children. Only 
one fault he had, which cock robins have likewise, 
as you may see if you look out of the nursery 
window — that when anyone else found a curious 
worm, he would hop round them and peck them 
and set up his tail and bristle up his feathers, 
just as a cock robin would, and declare that he 
found the worm first, and that it was his worm, 
and if not, that then it was not a worm at all. 

He had met Sir John at Scarborough or 
Fleetwood or somewhere or other (if you don’t 
care where, nobody else does), and had made 
acquaintance with him and become very fond 
of his children. Now Sir John knew nothing 
about sea cockyolly-birds, and cared less, pro- 
vided the fishmonger sent him good fish for 
dinner; and my lady knew as little, but she 
thought it proper that the children should know 
something. For in the stupid old times, you 
must understand, children were taught to know 
one thing and to know it well; but in these 
enlightened, new times they are taught to know 
a little about everything and to know it all ill — 
which is a great deal pleasanter and easier, and 
therefore quite right. 


[126] 


THE WATER BABIES 


So Ellie and he were walking on the rocks, 
and he was showing her about one in ten thou- 
sand of all the beautiful and curious things which 
are to be seen there. But little Ellie was not 
satisfied with them at all. She liked much better 
to play with live children, or even with dolls, 
which she could pretend were alive; and at last 
she said honestly : " I don’t care about all these 
things, because they can’t play with me or talk 
to me. If there were little children, now, in the 
water, as there used to be, I should like that.” 

" Children in the water, you strange little 
duck ? ” said the professor. 

"Yes,” said Ellie. "I know there used to be 
children in the water, and mermaids too, and 
mermen. I saw them all in a picture at home, 
of a beautiful lady sailing in a car drawn by 
dolphins, and babies flying round her, and one 
sitting in her lap, and the mermaids swimming 
and playing, and the mermen trumpeting on 
conch shells; and it is called 'The Triumph of 
Galatea’; and there is a burning mountain in 
the picture behind. It hangs on the great stair- 
case, and I have looked at it ever since I was 
a baby, and dreamed about it a hundred times; 
and it is so beautiful that it must be true.” 

[127] 


THE WATER BABIES 

But the professor had not the least notion 
of allowing that things were true merely because 
people thought them beautiful. So, with the 
greatest care and kindness, he explained to Ellie 
how impossible it was for these things to be true. 

Now little Ellie was, I suppose, a stupid little 
girl, for instead of being convinced, she only 
asked the same question over again. 

“ But why are there not water Rabies ? ” 

I trust and hope that it was because the 
professor trod at that moment on the edge of 
a very sharp mussel, and hurt one of his corns 
sadly, that he answered quite sharply, " Because 
there ain’t.” 

Which was not even good English. The 
professor ought to have said (if he was so angry 
as to say anything of the kind), " Because there 
are not,” or " are none,” or " are none of them.” 

And he groped with his net under the weeds 
so violently that, as it befell, he caught poor 
little Tom. 

He felt the net very heavy and lifted it out 
quickly, with Tom all entangled in the meshes. 

" Dear me ! ” he cried. " What a large pink 
holothurian; with hands, too! It must be con- 
nected with Synapta.” And he took him out. 

[128] 




THE WATER BABIES 


"It has actually eyes!” he cried. "It must be 
a cephalopod ! This is most extraordinary ! ” 

"No, I ain’t!” cried Tom, as loud as he could, 
for he did not like to be called bad names. 

" It is a water baby ! ” cried Ellie, and of course 
it was. 

"Water fiddlesticks, my dear!” said the pro- 
fessor, and he turned away sharply. 

There was no denying it. It was a water baby, 
and he had said a moment ago that there were 
none. What was he to do? 

He would have liked, of course, to have taken 
Tom home in a bucket. He would not have put 
him in spirits. Of course not. He would have 
kept him alive, and petted him (for he was a very 
kind old gentleman), and written a book about 
him, and given him two long names, of which 
the first would have said a little about Tom, and 
the second all about himself ; for of course he 
would have called him Hydrotecnon Ptthmlln- 
sprtsianum, or some other long name like that, 
for they are forced to call everything by long 
names now, because they have used up all the 
short ones. But — what would all the learned 
men say to him? And what would Ellie say, 
after what he had just told her? 

[ 1 3 ° ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


Now, if the professor had said to Ellie, "Yes, 
my darling,' it is a water baby, and a very wonder- 
ful thing it is, and it shows how little I know 
of the wonders of nature, in spite of forty years’ 
honest labor. I was just telling you that there 
could be no such creatures, and behold ! here 
is one come to show me that nature can do, and 
has done, beyond all that man’s poor fancy can 
imagine.” I think that if the professor had said 
that, little Ellie would have believed him more 
firmly, and respected him more deeply, and loved 
him better, than ever she had done before. But 
he was of a different opinion. He hesitated a 
moment. He longed to keep Tom, and yet he 
half wished he never had caught him ; and at last 
he quite longed to get rid of him. So he turned 
away and poked Tom with his finger, for want of 
anything better to do, and said carelessly, " My 
dear little maid, you must have dreamed of water 
babies last night, your head is so full of them.” 

Now Tom had been in the most horrible and 
unspeakable fright all the while, and had kept as 
quiet as he could, though he was called a holo- 
thurian and a cephalopod ; for it was fixed in his 
little head that if a man with clothes on caught 
him, he might put clothes on him too, and make 
[*31 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


a dirty black chimney sweep of him again. But 
when the professor poked him, it was more than 
he could bear, and between fright and rage he 
turned to bay as valiantly as a mouse in a corner, 
and bit the professor’s finger till it bled. 

" Oh ! ah ! yah ! ” cried he and, glad of an 
excuse to be rid of Tom, dropped him onto the 
seaweed, and thence he dived into the water and 
was gone in a moment. 

" But it was a water baby, and I heard it 
speak ! ” cried Ellie. " Ah, it is gone ! ” And she 
jumped down off the rock to try and catch Tom 
before he slipped into the sea. 

Too late ! and, what was worse, as she sprang 
down she slipped, and fell some six feet, with her 
head on a sharp rock, and lay quite still. 

The professor picked her up and tried to 
waken her, and called to her and cried over her, 
for he loved her very much; but she would not 
waken at all. So he took her up in his arms and 
carried her to her governess, and they all went 
home; and little Ellie was put to bed and lay 
there quite still ; only now and then she woke up 
and called out about the water baby ; but no one 
knew what she meant, and the professor did not 
tell, for he was ashamed to tell. 

[132] 


THE WATER BABIES 


And after a week, one moonlight night the 
fairies came flying in at the window and brought 
her such a pretty pair of wings that she could not 
help putting them on, and she flew with them out 
of the window and over the land and over the 
sea and up through the clouds, and nobody heard 
or saw anything of her for a very long while. 

And this is why they say that no one has ever 
yet seen a water baby. For my part, I believe 
that the naturalists get dozens of them when they 
are out dredging; but they say nothing about 
them, and throw them overboard again, for fear 
of spoiling their theories. But you see the pro- 
fessor was found out, as everyone is in due time. 
A very terrible old fairy found the professor out ; 
she knew what he would do as well as if she had 
seen it in a print book, as they say in the dear 
old West country; and he did it; and so he was 
found out beforehand, as everybody always is. 

So the old fairy took him in hand very severely 
there and then. But she says she is always most 
severe with the best people, because there is most 
chance of curing them, and therefore they are the 
patients who pay her best, for she has to work on 
the same salary as the Emperor of China’s physi- 
cians (it is a pity that all do not) — no cure, no 
[ 1 3 3 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


pay. So she took the poor professor in hand, 
and because he was not content with things as 
they are, she filled his head with things as they 
are not, to try if he would like them better; and 
because he did not choose to believe in a water 
baby when he saw it, she made him believe in 
worse things than water babies — in unicorns, 
firedrakes, manticoras, basilisks, griffins, rocs, 
ores, dog-headed men, three-headed dogs, and 
other pleasant creatures, which folks think never 
existed yet, and which folks hope never will exist, 
though they know nothing about the matter, and 
never will; and these creatures so upset, terrified, 
flustered, aggravated, confused, astounded, horri- 
fied, and totally flabbergasted the poor professor 
that the doctors said that he was out of his wits 
for three months; and perhaps they were right, 
as they are now and then. 


[ 134 ] 


CHAPTER V 


~^\UT what became of little Tom? He slipped 

□ \ away off the rocks into the water, as I 
' said before. But he could not help think- 
ing of little Elbe. He did not remember who 
she was, but he knew that she was a little girl, 
though she was a hundred times as big as he. 
That is not surprising; size has nothing to do 
with kindred. A tiny weed may be first cousin 
to a great tree, and a little dog like Vick knows 
that Lioness is a dog, too, though she is twenty 
times larger than herself. So Tom knew that Ellie 
was a little girl, and thought about her all that 
day, and longed to have had her to play with ; 
but he had very soon to think of something else. 

And here is the account of what happened to 
him, as it was published next morning in the 
Waterproof Gazette , on the finest watered paper, 
[ 135 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


for the use of the great fairy Mrs. Bedonebyas- 
youdid, who reads the news very carefully every 
morning, and especially the police cases, as you 
will hear very soon. 

He was going along the rocks in three-fathom 
water, watching the pollack catch prawns, and the 
wrasses nibble barnacles off the rocks, shells and 
all, when he saw a round cage of green withes; 
and inside it, looking very much ashamed of him- 
self, sat his friend the lobster, twiddling his horns 
instead of thumbs. 

" What ! have you been naughty, and have they 
put you in the lockup ? ” asked Tom. 

The lobster felt a little indignant at such a 
notion, but he was too much depressed in spirits 
to argue, so he only said, " I can’t get out.” 

u Why did you get in ? ” 

“ After that nasty piece of dead fish.” He had 
thought it looked and smelled very nice when he 
was outside, and so it did, for a lobster; but now 
he turned round and abused it because he was 
angry with himself. 

" Where did you get in ? ” 

" Through that round hole at the top.” 

" Then why don’t you get out through it ? ” 

" Because I can’t ” ; and the lobster twiddled 
[i36] 


THE WATER BABIES 

his horns more fiercely than ever, but he was 
forced to confess. " I have jumped upwards, 
downwards, backwards, and sideways at least four 
thousand times, and I can’t get out ; I always get 
up underneath there and can’t find the hole.” 

Tom looked at the trap, and, having more wit 
than the lobster, he saw plainly enough what was 
the matter, as you may if you look at a lobster 
pot. 

" Stop a bit,” said Tom. " Turn your tail up to 
me, and I ’ll pull you through hindforemost ; and 
then you won’t stick in the spikes.” 

But the lobster was so stupid and clumsy that 
he could n’t hit the hole. Like a great many fox 
hunters, he was very sharp as long as he was in 
his own country, but as soon as they get out of it, 
they lose their heads ; and so the lobster, so to 
speak, lost his tail. 

Tom reached and clawed down the hole after 
him till he caught hold of him ; and then, as was 
to be expected, the clumsy lobster pulled him in 
headforemost. 

"Hullo! here is a pretty business,” said Tom. 
" Now take your great claws and break the point 
off those spikes, and then we shall both get out 
easily.” 


[ 137 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


" Dear me, I never thought of that,” said the 
lobster, " and after all the experience of life that 
I have had ! ” 

You see, experience is of very little good unless 
a man, or a lobster, has wit enough to make use 
of it. For a good many people, like old Polonius, 
have seen all the world and yet remain little 1 
better than children after all. 

But they had not got half the spikes away 
when they saw a great dark cloud over them ; 
and, lo and behold, it was the otter. 

How she did grin and grin when she saw Tom. 
“ Yar!” said she, " you little meddlesome wretch, 

I have you now! I will serve you out for telling 
the salmon where I was ! ” And she crawled all 
over the pot to get in. 

Tom was horribly frightened, and still more 
frightened when she found the hole in the top, 
and squeezed herself right down through it, all 
eyes and teeth. But no sooner was her head 
inside than valiant Mr. Lobster caught her by 
the nose and held on. 

And there they were all three in the pot, 
rolling over and over, and very tight packing 
it was. And the lobster tore at the otter, and 
the otter tore at the lobster, and both squeezed 
[i38] 


THE WATER BABIES 


and thumped poor Tom till he had no breath 
left in his body ; and I don’t know what would 
have happened to him if he had not at last 
got on the otter’s back and safe out of the hole. 

He was right glad when he got out, but he 
would not desert his friend who had saved him, 
and the first time he saw his tail uppermost 
he caught hold of it and pulled with all his 
might. 

But the lobster would not let go. 

"Come along,” said Tom; "don’t you see 
she is dead ? ” And so she was, quite drowned 
and dead. And that was the end of the wicked 
otter. 

But the lobster would not let go. 

" Come along, you stupid old stick-in-the- 
mud,” cried Tom, " or the fisherman will catch 
you!” And that was true, for Tom felt some- 
one above beginning to haul up the pot. 

But the lobster would not let go. 

Tom saw the fisherman haul him up to the 
boatside, and thought it was all up with him. 
But when Mr. Lobster saw the fisherman, he 
gave such a furious and tremendous snap that 
he snapped out of his hand and out of the pot 
and safe into the sea. But he left his knobbed 
[ 1 39 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

claw behind him, for it never came into his 
stupid head to let go after all, so he just shook 
his claw off as the easier method. Tom asked 
the lobster why he never thought of letting go. 
He said very determinedly that it was a point 
of honor among lobsters. And so it is. 

And now happened to Tom a most wonder- 
ful thing, for he had not left the lobster five 
minutes before he came upon a water -baby. 

A real, live water baby sitting on the white 
sand, very busy about a little point of rock. 
And when it saw Tom, it looked up for a mo- 
ment and then cried, " Why, you are not one of 
us. Y ou are a new baby ! Oh, how delightful ! ” 

And it ran to Tom, and Tom ran to it, and 
they hugged and kissed each other for ever so 
long, they did not know why. But they did not 
want any introductions there under the water. 

At last Tom said, "Oh, where have you been 
all this while ? I have been looking for you so 
long, and I have been so lonely.” 

"We have been here for days and days. 
There are hundreds of us about the rocks. 
How was it you did not see us, or hear us 
when we sing and romp every evening before 
we go home ? ” 


[ MO] 



THE WATER BABIES 


Tom looked at the baby again, and then he 
said: "Well, this is wonderful! I have seen 
things just like you again and again, but I 
thought you were shells or sea creatures. I 
never took you for water babies like myself.” 

Now, was not that very odd? So odd, in- 
deed, that you will, no doubt, want to know how 
it happened, and why Tom could never find a 
water baby till after he had got the lobster out 
of the pot. And if you will read this story 
nine times over, and then think for yourself, 
you will find out why. It is not good for little 
boys to be told everything, and never to be 
forced to use their own wits. They would learn, 
then, no more than they do at Dr. Dulcimer’s, 
where the masters learn the lessons and the 
boys hear them, which saves a great deal of 
trouble — for the time being. 

" Now,” said the baby, " come and help me, 
or I shall not have finished before my brothers 
and sisters come and it is time to go home.” 

" What shall I help you at ? ” 

" At this poor dear little rock ; a great, clumsy 
bowlder came rolling by in the last storm and 
knocked all its head off and rubbed off all its 
flowers. And now I must plant it again with 
[M2] 


THE WATER BABIES 

seaweeds and coralline and anemones, and I 
will make it the prettiest little rock garden on 
all the shore.” 

So they worked away at the rock and planted 
it and smoothed the sand down round it, and 
capital fun they had till the tide began to turn. 
And then Tom heard all the other babies com- 
ing, laughing and singing and shouting and 
romping; and the noise they made was just 
like the noise of the ripple. So he knew that 
he had been hearing and seeing the water 
babies all along; only he did not know them, 
because his eyes and ears were not opened. 

And in they came, dozens and dozens of them, 
some bigger than Tom and some smaller, all 
in the neatest little white bathing dresses; and 
when they found that he was a new baby, they 
hugged him and kissed him and then put him 
in the middle and danced round him on the 
sand, and there was no one ever so happy as 
poor little Tom. 

" Now then,” they cried all at once, “ we must 
come away home, we must come away home, 
or the tide will leave us dry. We have mended 
all the broken seaweed, and put all the rock 
pools in order, and planted all the shells again 
[ 143 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

in the sand, and nobody will see where the ugly 
storm swept in last week.” 

And this is the reason why the rock pools 
are always so neat and clean — because the 
water babies come in shore after every storm, 
to sweep them out and comb them down and 
put them all to rights again. 

Only when men are wasteful and dirty and 
let sewers run into the sea instead of putting 
the stuff upon the fields, or throw herrings’ 
heads and dead dogfish or any other refuse into 
the water, there the water babies will not come, 
sometimes not for hundreds of years (for they 
cannot abide anything smelly or foul), but leave 
the sea anemones and the crabs to clear away 
everything, till the good tidy sea has covered 
up all the dirt in soft mud and clean sand, 
where the water babies can plant live cockles 
and whelks and razor shells and sea cucumbers 
and golden-combs, and make a pretty live gar- 
den again. And that, I suppose, is the reason 
why there are no water babies at any watering 
place which I have ever seen. 

And where is the home of the water babies? 
In St. Brendan’s fairy isle. 

Did you never hear of the blessed St. Brendan 
[ 144 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

— how he preached on the wild, wild Kerry 
coast, he and five other hermits, till they were 
weary and longed to rest? 

St. Brendan went out to the point of old 
Dunmore and looked over the tideway roaring 
round the Blasquets, at the end of all the world, 
and away into the ocean, and sighed, " Ah that 
I had wings as a dove ! ” And far away, before 
the setting sun, he saw a blue fairy sea and 
golden fairy islands, and he said, “ Those are 
the Islands of the Blest.” Then he and his 
friends sailed away and away to the westward, 
and were never heard of more. 

And when St. Brendan and the hermits came 
to that fairy isle, they found it overgrown with 
cedars and full of beautiful birds, and he sat 
down under the cedars and preached to all the 
birds in the air. And they liked his sermons 
so well that they told the fishes in the sea; and 
they came, and St. Brendan preached to them ; 
and the fishes told the water babies who live 
in the caves under the isle, and they came up 
by hundreds. And there he taught the water 
babies for a great many hundred years, till his 
eyes grew too dim to see and his beard grew 
so long that he dared not walk for fear of 
[145 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


treading on it, and then he might have tumbled 
down. And at last he and the five hermits fell 
fast asleep under the cedar shades, and there 
they sleep unto this day. But the fairies took 
to the water babies and taught them their 
lessons themselves. 

On those still, clear summer evenings when 
the sun sinks down into the sea among golden 
cloud capes and cloud islands and azure sky, the 
sailors fancy that they see, away to westward, 
St. Brendan’s fairy isle. 

But whether men can see it or not, ’St. Bren- 
dan’s Isle once actually stood there — a great 
land out in the ocean, which has sunk and sunk 
beneath the waves. Old Plato called it Atlantis, 
and told strange tales of the wise men who lived 
therein, and of the wars they fought in the old 
times. And from off that island came strange 
flowers, which linger still about this land : the 
Cornish heath and Cornish moneywort, and the 
delicate Venus’s-hair, and the London pride 
which covers the Kerry mountains, and the little 
pink butterwort of Devon, and the great blue 
butterwort of Ireland, and many a strange plant 
more — all fairy tokens left for wise men and 
good children from off St. Brendan’s Isle. 

[146] 


THE WATER BABIES 


Now, when Tom got there, he found that the 
isle stood all on pillars, and that its roots were 
full of caves. There were pillars of black, and 
pillars of green and crimson, and pillars ribboned 
with red and white and yellow sandstone; and 
there were blue grottoes and white grottoes, all 
curtained and draped with seaweeds, purple and 
crimson, green and brown, and strewn with soft 
white sand on which the water babies sleep 
every night. But, to keep the place clean and 
sweet, the crabs picked up all the scraps off 
the floor and ate them like so many monkeys, 
while the rocks were covered with ten thousand 
sea anemones and corals and madrepores, who 
scavenged the water all day long and kept it 
nice and pure. But to make up to them for 
having to do such dirty work, the fairies dressed 
them all in the most beautiful colors and pat- 
terns, till they looked like vast flower beds of 
gay blossoms. 

And instead of watchmen and policemen to 
keep out bad things at night, there were thou- 
sands and thousands of water snakes, and most 
wonderful creatures they were. They were all 
named after the Nereids, the sea fairies who took 
care of them. They were dressed in green velvet 
[i47] 


THE WATER BABIES 


and black velvet and purple velvet, and were all 
jointed in rings; and some of them had three 
hundred brains apiece, so that they must have 
been shrewd ; and some had eyes in their tails ; 
and some had eyes in every joint, so that they 
kept a sharp lookout, and if any evil thing came 
by, out they rushed upon it, and then out of each 
of their hundreds of feet there sprang a whole 
cutler’s shop of 


scythes, 

lances, 

billhooks, 

gimlets, 

pickaxes, 

corkscrews, 

forks, 

pins, 

penknives, 

needles, 

javelins, 

and so forth, 


which stabbed, shot, poked, pricked, and scratched 
those naughty beasts so terribly that they had 
to run for their lives or else be chopped into 
small pieces and be eaten afterwards. And if 
that is not all, every word, true, then there is no 
faith in microscopes. 

And there were the water babies in thousands, 
more than Tom, or you either, could count: all 
the little children whom the good fairies take 
to, because their cruel mothers and fathers will 
[148] 


THE WATER BABIES 

not ; all who come to grief by ill usage or 
ignorance or neglect; all the little children in 
alleys and courts and tumble-down cottages, who 
die by fever and cholera and measles and scarla- 
tina and nasty complaints which no one has any 
business to have, and which no one will have 
some day, when folks have common sense ; and 
all the little children who have been killed by 
cruel masters and wicked soldiers — they were 
all there. 

But I wish Tom had given up all his naughty 
tricks, and left off tormenting dumb animals, now 
that he had plenty of playfellows to amuse him. 
Instead of that, I am sorry to say, he would 
meddle with the creatures — all but the water 
snakes, for they would stand no nonsense. So 
he tickled the' madrepores to make them shut 
up, and frightened the crabs to make them hide 
in the sand and peep out at him with the tips of 
their eyes, and put stones into the anemones’ 
mouths to make them fancy that their dinner 
was coming. 

The other children warned him and said : 
" Take care what you are at. Mrs. Bedoneby- 
asyoudid is coming.” But Tom never heeded 
them, being quite riotous with high spirits and 
[ 149 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


good luck, till, one Friday morning early, Mrs. 
Bedonebyasyoudid came indeed. 

A very tremendous lady she was, and when 
the children saw her they all stood in a row, 
very upright indeed, and smoothed down their 
bathing dresses and put their hands behind 
them, just as if they were going to be examined 
by the inspector. 

And she had on a black bonnet and a black 
shawl and no crinoline at all, and a pair of large 
green spectacles and a great hooked nose — 
hooked so much that the bridge of it stood quite 
up above her eyebrows; and under her arm she 
carried a great birch rod. Indeed, she was so 
ugly that Tom was tempted to make faces at 
her, but did not, for he did not admire the look 
of the birch rod under her arm. 

And she looked at the children one by one, 
and seemed very much pleased with them, 
though she never asked them one question 
about how they were behaving; and then began 
giving them all sorts of nice sea things — sea 
cakes, sea apples, sea oranges, sea bull’s-eyes, 
sea toffee, and to the very best of all she gave 
sea ices, made out of sea cows’ cream, which 
never melt under water. 

[!5o] 





THE WATER BABIES 


And if you don’t quite believe me, then just 
think — What is more cheap and plentiful than 
sea rock? Then why should there not be sea 
toffee as well ? And everyone can find sea 
lemons (ready quartered, too) if they will look 
for them at low tide, and sea grapes too some- 
times, hanging in bunches. 

Now little Tom watched all these sweet things 
given away, till his mouth watered and his eyes 
grew as round as an owl’s; for he hoped that 
his turn would come at last And so it did; for 
the lady called him up, and held out her fingers 
with something in them, and popped it into 
his mouth; and, lo and behold, it was a nasty, 
cold, hard pebble. 

"You are a very cruel woman,” said he, and 
began to whimper. 

"And you are a very cruel boy, who puts 
pebbles into the sea anemones’ mouths, to take 
them in and make them fancy that they had 
caught a good dinner? As you did to them, so 
I must do to you.” 

" Who told you that ? ” said Tom. 

"You did yourself, this very minute.” 

Tom had never opened his lips, so he was very 
much taken aback indeed. 

[ 152 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

"Yes; everyone tells me exactly what they 
have done wrong, and that without knowing it 
themselves. So there is no use trying to hide 
anything from me. Now go, and be a good boy, 
and I will put no more pebbles in your mouth if 
you put none in other creatures’.” 

" I did not know there was any harm in it,” 
said Tom. 

" Then you know now. People continually 
say that to me ; but I tell them, if you don’t 
know that fire burns, that is no reason that it 
should not burn you ; and if you don’t know 
that dirt breeds fever, that is no reason why 
the fever should not kill you. The lobster did 
not know that there was any harm in getting 
into the lobster pot, but it caught him all the 
same.” 

" Dear me,” thought Tom, " she knows every- 
thing ! ” And so she did, indeed. 

" And so, if you do not know that things are 
wrong, that is no reason why you should not be 
punished for them — though not as much, not 
as much, my little man ” (and the lady looked 
very kindly, after all), "as if you did know.” 

" Well, you are a little hard on a poor lad,” 
said Tom. 


[i53] 


THE WATER BABIES 


"Not at all; I am the best friend you ever 
had in all your life. But I will tell you ; I can- 
not help punishing people when they do wrong. 
I like it no more than they do ; I am often very, 
very sorry for them, poor things ; but I cannot 
help it. If I tried not to do it, I should do it 
all the same; for I work by machinery, just like 
an engine, and am full of wheels and springs 
inside, and am wound up very carefully, so that 
I cannot help going.” 

"Was it long ago since they wound you up?” 
asked Tom. For he thought, the cunning little 
fellow, " She will run down some day, or they 
may forget to wind her up, as old Grimes used 
to forget to wind up his watch when he came 
in from the public house, and then I shall 
be safe.” 

" I was wound up once and for all, so long 
ago that I forget all about it.” 

"Dear me,” said Tom, "you must have been 
made a long time ! ” 

" I never was made, my child, and I shall go 
forever and ever, for I am as old as eternity and 
yet as young as time.” 

And there came over the lady’s face a very 
curious expression — very solemn and very sad, 
[ 154 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


and yet very, very sweet. And she looked up and 
away as if she were gazing through the sea 
and through the sky at something far, far off ; 
and as she did so there came such a quiet, tender, 
patient, hopeful smile over her face that Tom 
thought for a moment that she did not look 
ugly at all. And no more she did, for she was 
like a great many people who have not a pretty 
feature in their face and yet are lovely to behold, 
and draw little children’s hearts to them at once, 
because, though the house is plain enough, yet 
from the windows a beautiful and good spirit 
is looking forth. 

And Tom smiled in her face, she looked so 
pleasant for the moment. And the strange fairy 
smiled, too, and said, "Yes; you thought me 
very ugly just now, did you not ? ” 

Tom hung down his head and got very red 
about the ears. 

" And I am very ugly. I am the ugliest fairy 
in the world; and I shall be, till people behave 
themselves as they ought to do. And then I 
shall grow as handsome as my sister, who is 
the loveliest fairy in the world ; and her name 
is Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby. So she begins 
where I end, and I begin where she ends; and 
[i55] 


THE WATER BABIES 


those who will not listen to her must listen to 
me, as you will see. Now all of you run away 
except Tom, and he may stay and see what I 
am going to do. It will be a very good warning 
for him to begin with, before he goes to school. 

“ Now, Tom, every Friday I come down here 
and call up all who have ill-used little children, 
and serve them as they served the children.” 

And at that Tom was frightened and crept 
under a stone, which made the two crabs who 
lived there very angry and frightened their friend 
the butterfish ; but he would not move for them. 

And first she called up all the doctors who 
give little children so much physic (they were 
most of them old ones, for the young ones have 
learned better), and she set them all in a row, 
and very rueful they looked, for they knew what 
was coming. 

And first she pulled all their teeth out; and 
then she bled them all round ; and then she 
dosed them with calomel, and jalap, and salts 
and senna, and brimstone and treacle, and hor- 
rible faces they made; and then she gave them 
a great emetic of mustard and water and began 
all over again ; and that was the way she spent 
the morning. 


[ 156 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

And then she called up a whole troop of 
foolish ladies, who pinch up their children’s waists 
and toes; and she laced them all up in tight 
stays, so that they were choked and sick, and 
their noses grew red, and their hands and feet 
swelled ; and then she crammed their poor feet 
into the most dreadfully tight boots and made 
them all dance, which they did most clumsily in- 
deed ; and then she asked them how they liked 
it, and when they said not at all, she let them 
go, because they had only done it out of foolish 
fashion, fancying it was for their children’s good. 

Then she called up all the careless nursery 
maids, and stuck pins into them all over, and 
wheeled them about in perambulators with tight 
straps across their stomachs, and their heads 
and arms hanging over the side, till they were 
quite sick and stupid, and would have had sun- 
strokes; but, being under the water, they could 
only have water strokes, which, I assure you, are 
nearly as bad, as you will find if you try to sit 
under a mill wheel. And mind, when you hear 
a rumbling at the bottom of the sea, sailors will 
tell you that it is a ground swell; but now you 
know better. It is the old lady wheeling the 
maids about in perambulators. 

[i57l 


THE WATER BABIES 


And by that time she was so tired she had 
to go to luncheon. 

And after luncheon she set to work again, and 
called up all the cruel schoolmasters; and when 
she saw them, she frowned terribly and set to 
work in earnest, as if the best part of the day’s 
work was to come. 

And she boxed their ears, and thumped them 
over the head with rulers, and pandied their 
hands with canes; and at last she birched them 
all round soundly with her great birch rod and 
set them each a lesson of three hundred thousand 
lines to learn by heart before she came back 
next Friday. And at that they all cried so that 
their breaths came up through the sea like bub- 
bles out of soda water, and that is one reason of 
the bubbles in the sea. And by that time she 
was so tired that she was glad to stop; and 
indeed, she had done a very good day’s work. 

Tom did not quite dislike the old lady, but 
he could not help thinking her a little spiteful ; 
and no wonder if she was, poor old soul, for if 
she has to wait to grow handsome till people 
do as they would be done by, she will have to 
wait a very long time. 

Poor old Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid ! she has a 
[ 158 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


great deal of hard work before her, and had 
better have been born a washerwoman and stood 
over a tub all day ; but you see, people cannot 
always choose their own profession. 

But Tom longed to ask her one question; 
and after all, whenever she looked at him she 
did not look cross at all, and now and then there 
was a funny smile in her face, and she chuckled 
to herself in a way which gave Tom courage, and 
at last he said, " Pray, ma’am, may I ask you a 
question ? ” 

" Certainly, my little dear.” 

" Why don’t you bring all the bad masters 
here and serve them out, too — the butties that 
knock about the poor collier boys, and the nailers 
that file off their lads’ noses and hammer their 
fingers, and all the master sweeps, like my master 
Grimes? I saw him fall into the water long ago, 
so I surely expected he would have been here. 
I ’m sure he was bad enough to me.” 

Then the old lady looked so very stern that 
Tom was quite frightened, and sorry that he had 
been so bold. But she was not angry with him. 
She only answered, " I look after them all the week 
round, and they are in a different place from this, 
because they knew that they were doing wrong.” 
[ 1 59 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


She spoke very quietly, but there was something • 
in her voice which made Tom tingle from head to 
foot, as if he had got into a shoal of sea nettles. 

" But these people,” she went on, “ did not 
know that they were doing wrong; they were 
only stupid and impatient, and therefore I only 
punish them till they become patient and learn 
to use their common sense like reasonable beings. 
But as for chimney sweeps and collier boys and 
nailer lads, my sister has set good people to stop 
all that sort of thing, and very much obliged to 
her I am, for if she could only stop the cruel 
masters from ill-using poor children, I should 
grow handsome at least a thousand years sooner. 
And now do you be a good boy and do as you 
would be done by, which they did not ; and then, 
when my sister, Madame Doasyouwouldbedoneby, 
comes on Sunday, perhaps she will take notice 
of you and teach you how to behave. She under- 
stands that better than I do.” And so she went. 

Tom was very glad to hear that there was no 
chance of meeting Grimes again, though he was 
a little sorry for him, considering that he used 
sometimes to give him the leavings of the beer; 
but he determined to be a very good boy all 
Saturday; and he was, for he never frightened 
[ i6° ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


one crab, nor tickled any live corals, nor put 
stones into the sea anemones’ mouths, to make 
them fancy they had got a dinner; and when 
Sunday morning came, sure enough, Mrs. Doas- 
youwouldbedoneby came, too. Whereat all the 
little children began dancing and clapping their 
hands, and Tom danced, too, with all his might. 

And as for the pretty lady, I cannot tell you 
what the color of her hair was, or of her eyes ; 
no more could Tom, for when anyone looks 
at her, all they can think of is that she has 
the sweetest, kindest, tenderest, funniest, mer- 
riest face they ever saw or want to see. But 
Tom saw that she was a very tall woman — as 
tall as her sister; but instead of being gnarly 
and horny and scaly and prickly like her, she 
was the most nice, soft, fat, smooth, pussy, 
cuddly, delicious creature who ever nursed a 
baby ; and she understood babies thoroughly, 
for she had plenty of her own — whole rows and 
regiments of them, and has to this day. And 
all her delight was, whenever she had a spare 
moment, to play with babies ; in which she 
showed herself a woman of sense, for babies 
are the best company, and the pleasantest play- 
fellows, in the world ; at least, so all the wise 
[ 1 6 1 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


people in the world think. And therefore, when 
the children saw her, they naturally all caught 
hold of her, and pulled her till she sat down 
on a stone, and climbed into her lap, and clung 
round her neck, and caught hold of her hands; 
and then they all put their thumbs into their 
mouths and began cuddling and purring like 
so many kittens, as they ought to have done ; 
while those who could get nowhere else sat 
down on the sand and cuddled her feet — for 
no one, you know, wears shoes in the water. 
And Tom stood staring at them, for he could 
not understand what it was all about. 

" And who are you, you little darling ? ” 
she said. 

" Oh, that is the new baby ! ” they all cried, 
pulling their thumbs out of their mouths, "and 
he never had any mother,” and they all put their 
thumbs back again, for they did not wish to 
lose any time. 

"Then I will be his mother, and he shall have 
the very best place ; so get out, all of you, 
this moment.” 

And she took up two great armfuls of babies 
— nine hundred under one arm and thirteen 
hundred under the other — and threw them 
[162] 


THE WATER BABIES 

away, right and left, into the water. But they 
minded it no more than the naughty boys 
in " Struwwelpeter ” minded when St. Nicholas 
dipped them in his inkstand, and did not even 
take their thumbs out of their mouths, but came 
paddling and wriggling back to her like so many 
tadpoles, till you could see nothing of her from 
head to foot for the swarm of little babies. 

But she took Tom in her arms, and laid him in 
the softest place of all, and kissed him, and patted 
him, and talked to him, tenderly and low, such 
things as he had never heard before in his life ; 
and Tom looked up into her eyes, and loved her, 
and loved, till he fell fast asleep from pure love. 

And when he awoke, she was telling the 
children a story. And what story did she tell 
them? One story she told them, which begins 
every Christmas Eve and yet never ends at all 
forever and ever; and as she went on, the chil- 
dren took their thumbs out of their mouths and 
listened quite seriously, but not sadly at all, for 
she never told them anything sad; and Tom 
listened, too, and never grew tired of listening. 
And he listened so long that he fell fast asleep 
again, and when he woke, the lady was nursing 
him still. 


[163] 


THE WATER BABIES 


w Don’t go away,” said little Tom. "This is so 
nice. I never had anyone to cuddle me before.” 

" Don’t go away,” said all the children ; " you 
have not sung us one song.” 

" Well, I have time for only one. So what shall 
it be ? ” 

"The doll you lost! The doll you lost!” cried 
all the babies at once. 

So the strange fairy sang: 

" I once had a sweet little doll, dears, 

The prettiest doll in the world ; 

Her cheeks were so red and so white, dears, 

And her hair was so charmingly curled. 

But I lost my poor little doll, dears, 

As I played in the heath one day ; 

And I cried for her more than a week, dears ; 

But I never could find where she lay. 

M I found my poor little doll, dears, 

As I played in the heath one day ; 

Folks say she is terribly changed, dears, 

For her paint is all washed away, 

And her arm trodden off by the cows, dears, 

And her hair not the least bit curled : 

Yet, for old sakes’ sake, she is still, dears, 

The prettiest doll in the world.” 

What a silly song for a fairy to sing ! And 
what silly water babies to be quite delighted 
at it ! 


[164] 



THE WATER BABIES 


"Now,” said the fairy to Tom, "will you be a 
good boy for my sake, and torment no more sea 
beasts till I come back ? ” 

"And you will cuddle me again?” said poor 
little Tom. 

" Of course I will, you little duck. I should like 
to take you with me and cuddle you all the way, 
only I must not ” ; and away she went. 

So Tom really tried to be a good boy, and 
tormented no sea beasts after that as long as he 
lived — and he is quite alive, I assure you, still. 

Oh, how good little boys ought to be who 
have kind, pussy mammas to cuddle them and 
tell them stories, and how afraid they ought to 
be of growing naughty and bringing tears into 
their mammas’ pretty eyes ! 


i 


[166] 


CHAPTER VI 


ERE I come to the very saddest part 
of all my story. 

I know some people will only laugh 
at it and call it much ado about nothing; but I 
know one man who would not, and he was an 
officer with a pair of gray mustaches as long 
as your arm, who said once in company that two 
of the most heart-rending sights in the world, 
which moved him most to tears, which he would 
do anything to prevent or remedy, were a child 
over a broken toy and a child stealing sweets. 

The company did not laugh at him (his 
mustaches were too long and too gray for 
that), but after he was gone they called him 
sentimental and so forth — all but one dear 
little old Quaker lady with a soul as white as 
[167] 


THE WATER BABIES 


her cap, who was not, of course, generally par- 
tial to soldiers; and she said very quietly, like 
a Quaker, " Friends, it is borne upon my mind 
that that is a truly brave man.” 

You may fancy that Tom was quite good 
when he had everything that he could want or 
wish, but you would be very much mistaken. 
Being quite comfortable is a very good thing, 
but it does not make people good. Indeed, it 
sometimes makes them naughty. And I am 
very sorry to say that this happened to little 
Tom. For he grew so fond of the sea bull’s- 
eyes and sea lollipops that his foolish little 
head could think of nothing else ; and he was 
always longing for more, and wondering when 
the strange lady would come again and give 
him some, and what she would give him, and 
how much, and whether she would give him 
more than the others. And he thought of 
nothing but lollipops by day, and dreamed of 
nothing else by night — and what happened 
then ? 

That he began to watch the lady to see where 
she kept the sweet things, and began hiding 
and sneaking and following her about and pre- 
tending to be looking the other way or going 
[168] 


THE WATER BABIES 

after something else, till he found out that she 
kept them in a beautiful mother-of-pearl cabinet, 
away in a deep crack of the rocks. 

And he longed to go to the cabinet, and yet 
he was afraid; and then he longed again and 
was less afraid ; and at last, by continual think- 
ing about it, he longed so violently that he was 
not afraid at all. And one night, when all the 
other children were asleep, and he could not 
sleep for thinking of lollipops, he crept away 
among the rocks and got to the cabinet, and 
behold ! it was open. 

But when he saw all the nice things inside, 
instead of being delighted he was quite fright- 
ened and wished he had never come there. 
And then he would only touch them, and he 
did; and then he would only taste one, and 
he did ; and then he would only eat one, and he 
did; and then he would only eat two, and then 
three, and so on; and then he was terrified lest 
she should come and catch him, and began gob- 
bling them down so fast that he did not taste 
them or have any pleasure in them; and then 
he felt sick and would have only one more, 
and then only one more again, and so on till 
he had eaten them all up. 

[169] 


THE WATER BABIES 


And all the while, close behind him, stood 
Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid. Some people may say, 
" But why did she not keep her cupboard locked ? ” 
Well, I know. It may seem a very strange thing, 
but she never does keep her cupboard locked ; 
everyone may go and taste for themselves, and 
fare accordingly. It is very odd, but so it is; 
and I am quite sure that she knows best. Per- 
haps she wishes people to keep their fingers out 
of the fire by having them burned. 

She took off her spectacles, because she did 
not like to see too much ; and in her pity she 
arched up her eyebrows into her very hair, and 
her eyes grew so wide that they would have 
taken in all the sorrows of the world, and filled 
with great big tears, as they too often do. 

But all she said was, " Ah, y<5u poor little 
dear! you are just like all the rest.” 

But she said it to herself, and Tom neither 
heard nor saw her. Now, you must not fancy 
that she was sentimental at all. If you do, and 
think that she is going to let off you or me or 
any human being when we do wrong, because 
she is too tender-hearted to punish us, then you 
will find yourself very much mistaken, as many 
a man does every year and every day. 

[170] 


THE WATER BABIES 

But what did the strange fairy do when she 
saw all her lollipops eaten? Did she fly at Tom, 
catch him by the scruff of the neck, hold him, 
hump him, hurry him, hit him, poke him, pull 
him, pinch him, pound him, put him in the 
corner, shake him, slap him, set him on a cold 
stone to reconsider himself, and so forth? 

Not a bit. You may watch her at work, if you 
know where to find her, but you will never see 
her do that. For if she had, she knew quite well, 
Tom would have fought and kicked and bit and 
said bad words and turned again that moment 
into a naughty little heathen chimney sweep, 
with his hand, like Ishmael’s of old, against every 
man, and every man’s hand against him. 

Did she question him, hurry him, frighten 
him, threaten him, to make him confess? Not 
a bit. You may see her, as I said, at her work 
often enough, if you know where to look for 
her, but you will never see her do that. For if 
she had, she would have tempted him to tell 
lies in his fright, and that would have been 
worse for him, if possible, than even becoming 
a heathen chimney sweep again. 

So she just said nothing at all about the 
matter, not even when Tom came next day 

[171] 


THE WATER BABIES 


with the rest for sweet things. He was horribly 
afraid of coming, but he was still more afraid 
of staying away, lest anyone should suspect him. 
He was dreadfully afraid, too, lest there should 
be no sweets (as was to be expected, he hav- 
ing eaten them all) and lest then the fairy 
should inquire who had taken them. But be- 
hold ! she pulled out just as many as ever, 
which astonished Tom and frightened him still 
more. 

And when the fairy looked him full in the 
face, he shook from head to foot ; however, she 
gave him his share like the rest, and he thought 
within himself that she could not have found 
him out. 

But when he put the sweets into his mouth, 
he hated the taste of them, and they made him 
so sick that he had to get away as fast as he 
could ; and terribly sick he was, and very cross 
and unhappy, all the week after. 

Then, when next week came, he had his 
share again, and again the fairy looked him full 
in the face, but more sadly than she had ever 
looked. And he could not bear the sweets, but 
took them again in spite of himself. 

And when Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby came, 

[i; 2 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

he wanted to be cuddled like the rest, but she 
said very seriously, " I should like to cuddle you, 
but I cannot, you are so horny and prickly.” 

And Tom looked at himself, and he was all 
over prickles, just like a sea egg. 

Which was quite natural ; for you must know 
and believe that people’s souls make their 
bodies, just as a snail makes its shell (I am 
not joking, my little man ; I am in serious, 
solemn earnest). And therefore, when Tom’s 
soul grew all prickly with naughty tempers, his 
body could not help growing prickly, too, so 
that nobody would cuddle him or play with him 
or even like to look at him. 

What could Tom do now but go away and 
hide in a corner and cry ? For nobody would 
play with him, and he knew full well why. 

And he was so miserable all that week that 
when the ugly fairy came, and looked at him 
once more full in the face, more seriously and 
sadly than ever, he could stand it no longer, 
and thrust the sweetmeats away, saying, "No, I 
don’t want any; I can’t bear them now,” and 
then burst out crying, poor little man, and 
told Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid every word as it 
happened. 


[ i73 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


He was horribly frightened when he had 
done so, for he expected her to punish him 
very severely. But instead, she only took him up 
and kissed him, which was not quite pleasant, 
for her chin was very bristly indeed ; but he 
was so lonely-hearted, he thought that rough 
kissing was better than none. 

" I will forgive you, little man,” she said. " I 
always forgive everyone the moment they tell 
me the truth of their own accord.” 

" Then you will take away all these nasty 
prickles ? ” 

"That is a very different matter. You put 
them there yourself, and only you can take them 
away.” 

"But how can I do that?” asked Tom, crying 
afresh. 

"Well, I think it is time for you to go to 
school ; so I shall fetch you a schoolmistress, who 
will teach you how to get rid of your prickles.” 
And so she went away. 

Tom was frightened at the notion of a school- 
mistress, for he thought she would certainly 
come with a birch rod or a cane; but he com- 
forted himself, at last, that she might be some- 
thing like the old woman at Vendale — which 
[ 174 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


she was not in the least, for when the fairy 
brought her, she was the most beautiful little 
girl that eyer was seen, with long curls floating 
behind her like a golden cloud, and long robes 
floating all around her like a silver one. 

" There he is,” said the fairy, " and you must 
teach him to be good, whether you like or not.” 

" I know,” said the little girl, but she did not 
seem quite to like, for she put her finger in her 
mouth and looked at Tom under her brows, and 
Tom put his finger in his mouth and looked at 
her under his brows, for he was horribly ashamed 
of himself. 

The little girl seemed hardly to know how to 
begin, and perhaps she would never have begun 
at all if poor Tom had not burst out crying and 
begged her to teach him to be good, and help 
him to cure his prickles ; and at that she grew so 
tender-hearted that she began teaching him as 
prettily as ever child was taught in the world. 

And what did the little girl teach Tom ? She 
taught him, first, what you have been taught ever 
since you said your first prayers at your mother’s 
knees, but she taught him much more simply; 
for the lessons in that world, my child, have no 
such hard words in them as the lessons in this, 
[i75 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

and therefore the water babies like them better 
than you like your lessons, and long to learn 
them more and more. 

So she talight Tom every day in the week; 
only on Sundays she always went away home, 
and the kind fairy took her place. And before 
she had taught Tom many Sundays, his prickles 
had vanished quite away and his skin was 
smooth and clean again. 

" Dear me ! ” said the little girl ; “ why, I know 
you now. You are the very same chimney sweep 
who came into my bedroom.” 

"Dear me! ’’cried Tom. "And I know you, too, 
now. You are the very little white lady whom I 
saw in bed.” And he jumped at her and longed 
to hug and kiss her, but did not, remembering 
that she was a lady born; so he only jumped 
round and round her till he was quite tired. 

And then they began telling each other all 
their story — how he had got into the water and 
she had fallen over the rock; and how he had 
swum down to the sea and how she had flown 
out of the window; and how this, that, and the 
other, till it was all talked out; and then they 
both began over again, and I can’t say which of 
the two talked fastest. 


[176] 



t=*. Li ley-Yourv^ 


THE WATER BABIES 


And then they set to work at their lessons 
again, and both liked them so well that they went 
on well till seven full years were past and gone. 

You may fancy that Tom was quite content 
and happy all those seven years ; but the truth is, 
he was not. He had always one thing on his 
mind, and that was — where little Ellie went 
when she went home on Sundays. 

To a very beautiful place, she said. 

But what was the beautiful place like, and 
where was it? 

Ah ! that is just what she could not say. And 
it is strange, but true, that no one can say, and 
that those who have been oftenest in it, or even 
nearest to it, can say least about it and make 
people understand least what it is like. There 
are a good many folks about the Other-End-of- 
Nowhere (where Tom went afterwards), who pre- 
tend to know it from north to south as well as if 
they had been penny-postmen there, but as they 
are safe at the Other-End-of- Nowhere, nine hun- 
dred and ninety-nine million miles away, what 
they say cannot concern us. 

But the dear, sweet, loving, wise, good, self- 
sacrificing people, who really go there, can never 
tell you anything about it, save that it is the 
[178] 


THE WATER BABIES 


most beautiful place in all the world ; and if you 
ask them more, they grow modest, and hold their 
peace, for fear of being laughed at ; and quite 
right they are. 

So all that good little Ellie could say was that 
it was worth all the rest of the world put to- 
gether. And of course that only made Tom the 
more anxious to go likewise. 

" Miss Ellie,” he said at last, " I will know 
why I cannot go with you when you go home 
on Sundays, or I shall have no peace and give 
you none either.” 

" You must ask the fairies that.” 

So. when the fairy, Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid, 
came next, Tom asked her. 

" Little boys who are only fit to play with sea 
beasts cannot go there,” she said. "Those who 
go there must go first where they do not like, 
and do what they do not like, and help somebody 
they do not like.” 

" Why, did Ellie do that ? ” 

" Ask her.” 

Ellie blushed and said: "Yes, Tom; I did not 
like coming here at first ; I was so much happier 
at home, where it is always Sunday. And I was 
afraid of you at first, because — because — ” 
[ 179 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


" Because I was all over prickles ? But I am 
not prickly now, am I, Miss Ellie?” 

" No,” said Ellie. " I like you very much now, 
and I like coming here, too.” 

"And perhaps,” said the fairy, "you will learn 
to like going where you don’t like, and helping 
someone that you don’t like, as Ellie has.” 

But Tom put his finger in his mouth and hung 
his head down, for he did not see that at all. 

So when Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby came, 
Tom asked her; for he thought in his little head, 
" She is not so strict as her sister, and perhaps she 
may let me off more easily.” 

Ah, Tom, Tom, silly fellow! and yet I don’t 
know why I should blame you, while so many 
grown people have got fhe very same notion in 
their heads. 

But when they try it, they get just the same 
answer as Tom did. For when he asked the 
second fairy, she told him just what the first 
did, and in the very same words. 

Tom was very unhappy at that, and when 
Ellie went home on Sunday, he fretted and 
cried all day, and did not care to listen to the 
fairy’s stories about good children, though they 
were prettier than ever. Indeed, the more he 
[180] 


THE WATER BABIES 


overheard of them, the less he liked to listen, 
because they were all about children who did 
what they did not like, and took trouble for other 
people, and worked to feed their little brothers 
and sisters, instead of caring only for their play. 
And when she began to tell a story about a 
holy child in old times, who was martyred by 
the heathen because it would not worship idols, 
Tom could bear no more, and ran away and hid 
among the rocks. 

And when Ellie came back, he was shy with 
her, because he fancied she looked down on him 
and thought him a coward. And then he grew 
quite cross with her, because she was superior 
to him and did what he could not do. And poor 
Ellie was quite surprised and sad, and at last 
Tom burst out crying, but he could not tell her 
what was really in his mind. 

And all the while he was eaten up with curi- 
osity to know where Ellie went to; so that he 
began not to care for his playmates, or for the 
sea palace, or anything else. But perhaps that 
made matters all the easier for him, for he grew 
so discontented with everything round him that 
he did not care to stay and did not care where 
he went. 


[ 1 8 1 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


" Well,” he said at last, " I am so miserable 
here, I ’ll go, if only you will go with me.” 

" Ah ! ” said Ellie, " I wish I might ; but the 
worst of it is that the fairy says that you must 
go alone if you go at all. Now don’t poke that 
poor crab about, Tom (for he was feeling very 
naughty and mischievous), or the fairy will have 
to punish you.” 

Tom was very nearly saying, " I don’t care if 
she does,” but he stopped himself in time. 

" I know what she wants me to do,” he said, 
whining most dolefully. " She wants me to go 
after that horrid old Grimes. I don’t like him, 
that ’s certain. And if I find him, he will turn 
me into a chimney sweep again, I know. That ’s 
what I have been afraid of all along. 

"No, he won’t; I know as much as that. No- 
body can turn water babies into sweeps, or hurt 
them at all, as long as they are good.” 

" Ah,” said naughty Tom, " I see what you 
want; you are persuading me to go because you 
are tired of me and want to get rid of me.” 

Little Ellie opened her eyes very wide at that, 
and they were all brimming over with tears. 

"O, Tom, Tom,” she said, very mournfully; 
and then she cried, " O, Tom ! where are you ? ” 
[182] 


THE WATER BABIES 


And Tom cried, " O, Ellie, where are you ? ” 

For neither of them could see each other. 
Little Ellie vanished quite away, and Tom heard 
her voice calling him, and growing smaller and 
smaller and fainter and fainter, till all was silent. 

Who was frightened then but Tom? He 
swam up and down among the rocks, into all 
the halls and chambers, faster than ever he swam 
before, but could not find her. He shouted after 
her, but she did not answer; he asked all the 
other children, but they had not seen her; and 
at last he went up to the top of the water and 
began crying and screaming for Mrs. Doasyou- 
wouldbedoneby, but she did not come. Then 
he began crying and screaming for Mrs. Bedone- 
byasyoudid, which perhaps was the best thing 
to do, for she came in a moment. 

" Oh ! ” said Tom. "O dear, O dear! I have 
been naughty to Ellie, and I have killed her — 
I know I have killed her.” 

"Not quite that,” said the fairy, "but I have 
sent her away home, and she will not come back 
again for I do not know how long.” 

And at that Tom cried so bitterly that the 
salt sea was swelled with his tears, and the tide 
was higher than it had been the day before. 

[183] 


THE WATER BABIES 


"How cruel of you to send Ellie away!” 
sobbed Tom. "However, I will find her again, 
if I go to the world’s end to look for her.” 

The fairy took him on her lap very kindly, 
just as her sister would have done, and put him 
in mind how it was not her fault, because she 
was wound up inside, like watches, and could 
not help doing things, whether she liked or 
not. And then she told him how he had been 
in *the nursery long enough, and must go out 
now and see the world, if he intended ever to 
be a man ; and how he must go all alone by him- 
self, as everyone else that ever was born has to 
go, and see with his own eyes, and smell with 
his own nose, and make his own bed and lie on 
it, and burn his own fingers if he put them into 
the fire. And then she told him how many fine 
things there were to be seen in the world, and 
what an odd, curious, pleasant, orderly, respect- 
able, well-managed, and, on the whole, success- 
ful (as, indeed, might have been expected) sort of 
a place it was, if people would only be tolerably 
brave and honest and good in it ; and then she 
told him not to be afraid of anything he met, 
for nothing would harm him if he remembered 
all his lessons and did what he knew was right. 

[184] 


THE WATER BABIES 

And at last she comforted poor little Tom so 
much that he was quite eager to go, and wanted 
to set out that minute. 

" Only,” he said, " if I might see Ellie once 
before I went ! ” 

" Why do you want that ? ” 

" Because — because I should be so much 
happier if I thought she had forgiven me.” 

And in the twinkling of an eye there stood 
Ellie, smiling and looking so happy that Tom 
longed to kiss her, but was still afraid it would 
not be respectful, because she was a lady born. 

" I am going, Ellie! ” said Tom. " I am going 
if it is to the world’s end. But I don’t like going 
at all, and that ’s the truth.” 

" Pooh ! pooh ! pooh ! ” said the fairy. " Y ou 
will like it very well indeed, you little rogue, 
and you know that at the bottom of your heart. 
But if you don’t, I will make you like it. Come 
here, and see what happens to people who do 
only what is pleasant.” 

And she took out of one of her cupboards 
(she had all sorts of mysterious cupboards in 
the cracks of the rocks) the most wonderful 
waterproof book, full of such photographs as 
never were seen. 


[i85] 


THE WATER BABIES 

And on the title-page was written, " The 
History of the Great and Famous Nation of the 
Doasyoulikes, who came away from the country 
of Hard work because they wanted to play on 
the jew’s-harp all day long.” 

In the first picture they saw these Doas- 
youlikes living in the land of Ready-made, at the 
foot of the Happy-go-lucky Mountains, where 
flapdoodle grows wild ; and if you want to know 
what that is, you must read " Peter Simple.” 

They lived very much such a life as those jolly 
old Greeks in Sicily, whom you may see painted 
on the ancient vases, and really there seemed 
to be great excuses for them, for they had no 
need to work. 

Instead of houses, they lived in the beautiful 
caves of tufa and bathed in the warm springs 
three times a day; and as for clothes, it was so 
warm there that the gentlemen walked about 
in little beside a cocked hat, a pair of straps, 
and some light summer tackle; and the ladies 
all gathered gossamer in autumn (when they 
were not too lazy) to make their winter dresses. 

They were very fond of music, but it was too 
much trouble to learn the piano or the violin, 
and as for dancing, that would have been too 
[186] 





THE WATER BABIES 

great an exertion. So they sat on ant hills all 
day long and played on the jew’s-harp, and if 
the ants bit them, why they just got up and went 
to the next ant hill, till they were bitten there 
likewise. 

And they sat under the flapdoodle trees and 
let the flapdoodle drop into their mouths, and 
under the vines and squeezed the grape juice 
down their throats, and if any little pigs ran 
about ready roasted, crying, " Come and eat me,” 
as was their fashion in that country, they waited 
till the pigs ran against their mouths, and then 
took a bite and were content. 

They needed no weapons, for no enemies ever 
came near their land ; and no tools, for everything 
was ready-made to their hand ; and the stern 
old fairy, Necessity, never came near them to hunt 
them up and make them use their wits or die. 

And so on, and so on, and so on, till there 
were never such comfortable, easy-going, happy- 
go-lucky people in the world. 

" Well, that is a jolly life,” said Tom. 

" Y ou think so ? ” said the fairy. " Do you see 
that great peaked mountain there behind,” said 
she, " with smoke coming out of its top ? ” 

" Yes.” 


[188] 


THE WATER BABIES 


" And do you see all those ashes and slag and 
cinders lying about ? ” 

" Yes.” 

"Then turn over the next five hundred years, 
and you will see what happens next.” 

And behold, the mountain had blown up like 
a barrel of gunpowder, and then boiled over like 
a kettle ; whereby one third of the Doasyoulikes 
were blown into the air, and another third were 
smothered in ashes ; so that there was only 
one third left. 

"You see,” said the fairy, "what comes of 
living on a burning mountain.” 

" Oh, why did you not warn them ? ” said Elbe. 

" I did warn them all that I could. I let the 
smoke come out of the mountain ; and wherever 
there is smoke there is fire. And I laid the 
ashes and cinders all about ; and wherever there 
are cinders, cinders may be again. But they did 
not like to face facts, my dears, as very few 
people do; and so they invented a cock-and-bull 
story — which, I am sure, I never told them — 
that the smoke was the breath of a giant whom 
some gods or other had buried under the 
mountain, and that the cinders were what the 
dwarfs roasted the little pigs whole with, and 
[189] 


THE WATER BABIES 


other nonsense of that kind. And when folks 
are in that humor, I cannot teach them save 
by the good old birch rod.” 

And then she turned over the next five hun- 
dred years, and there were the remnant of the 
Doasyoulikes, doing as they liked, as before. 
They were too lazy to move away from the 
mountain, so they said, " If it has blown up 
once, that is all the more reason that it should 
not blow up again.” And they were few in 
number, but 'they only said, " The more the 
merrier, but the fewer the better fare.” How- 
ever, that was not quite true, for all the flap- 
doodle trees were killed by the volcano, and they 
had eaten all the roast pigs, who, of course, could 
not be expected to have little ones. So they had 
to live very hard, on nuts and roots which they 
scratched out of the ground with sticks. Some 
of them talked of sowing corn, as their ancestors 
used to do before they came into the land of 
Ready-made, but they had forgotten how to make 
plows (they had forgotten even how to make 
jew’s-harps by this time), and had eaten all the 
seed corn which they brought out of the land 
of Hardwork years since, and of course it was 
too much trouble to go away and find more. 

[190] 


THE WATER BABIES 

So they lived miserably on roots and nuts, and 
all the weakly little children died. 

" Why,” said Tom, " they are growing no 
better than savages.” 

"And look how ugly they are all getting,” 
said Ellie. 

" Yes; when people live on poor vegetables 
instead of roast beef and plum pudding, their 
jaws grow large and their lips coarse. 

And she turned over the next five hundred 
years. And there they were all living up in 
trees, and making nests to keep off the rain. 
And underneath the trees were lions. 

" Why,” said Ellie, " the lions seem to have 
eaten a good many of them, for there are very 
few left now.” 

"Yes,” said the fairy; "you see it was only 
the strongest and most active ones who could 
climb the trees and so escape.” 

" But what great, hulking, broad-shouldered 
chaps they are,” said Tom ; " they are as rough 
a lot as ever I saw.” 

" Yes, they are getting very strong now, for 
the ladies will not marry any but the very 
strongest and fiercest gentlemen, who can help 
them up the trees out of the lions’ way.” 

[191] 


THE WATER BABIES 


And she turned over the next five hundred 
years. And in that they were fewer still, and 
stronger and fiercer; but their feet had changed 
shape very oddly, for they laid hold of the 
branches with their great toes as if they had 
been thumbs, just as a Hindu tailor uses his 
toes to thread his needle. 

The children were very much surprised, and 
asked the fairy whether that was her doing. 

"Yes, and no,” she said, smiling. "It was 
only those who could use their feet as well as 
their hands who could get a good living, so that 
they got the best of everything and starved out 
all the rest.” 

" But there is a hairy one among them,” said 
Ellie. 

"Ah ! ” said the fairy, " that will be a great 
man in his time, and chief of all the tribe.” 

And when she turned over the next five 
hundred years, it was true. 

For this hairy chief had had hairy children, 
and they hairier children still ; and everyone 
wished to marry hairy husbands and have hairy 
children, too, for the climate was growing so 
damp that none but the hairy ones could live; 
all the rest coughed and sneezed and had sore 
[192] 


THE WATER BABIES 


throats and went into consumptions before they 
could grow r up to be men and women. 

Then the fairy turned over the next five 
hundred years. And they were fewer still. 

" Why, there is one on the ground picking 
up roots,” said Ellie, " and he cannot walk 
upright.” 

No more he could, for in the same way that 
the shape of their feet had altered, the shape 
of their backs had altered also. 

"Why,” cried Tom, "they are all apes.” 

" Something fearfully like it, poor foolish crea- 
tures,” said the fairy. " They are grown so 
stupid now that they can hardly think, for none 
of them have used their wits for many hundred 
years. They have almost forgotten, too, how to 
talk. For each stupid child forgot some of the 
words it heard from its stupid parents, and had 
not wits enough to make fresh words for itself. 
Besides, they are grown so fierce and brutal that 
they keep out of each other’s way and mope and 
sulk in the dark forests, never hearing each 
other’s voices, till they have forgotten almost 
what speech is like. I am afraid they will all 
be apes very soon, and all by doing only what 
they liked.” 


[ i93] 


THE WATER BABIES 

And in the next five hundred years they were 
all dead and gone, by bad food and wild beasts 
and hunters — all except one tremendous old 
fellow with jaws like a jack, who stood full seven 
feet high ; and M. Du Chaillu came up to him 
and shot him, as he stood roaring and thump- 
ing his breast. And he remembered that his 
ancestors had once been men, and tried to say, 
"Am I not a man and a brother ? ” but had for- 
gotten how to use his tongue ; and then he had 
tried to call for a doctor, but he had forgotten 
the word for one. So all he said was, "Ubboboo!” 
and died. 

And that was the end of the great and jolly 
nation of the Doasyoulikes. And when Tom 
and Ellie came to the end of the book, they 
looked very sad and solemn. 

" But could you not have saved them from 
becoming apes ? ” said little Ellie at last. 

"At first, my dear, if only they would have 
behaved like men and set to work to do what 
they did not like. But the longer they waited 
and behaved like dumb beasts, who only do what 
they like, the stupider and clumsier they grew, 
till at last they were past all cure, for they had 
thrown their own wits away. It is such things 
[ 194 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

as this that help to make me so ugly that I know 
not when I shall grow fair.” 

" And where are they all now ? ” asked Ellie. 

" Exactly where they ought to be, my dear.” 

"Yes!” said the fairy solemnly, half to her- 
self, as she closed the wonderful book. " Folks 
say now that I can make beasts into men. Well, 
perhaps they are right and perhaps, again, they 
are wrong. That is one of the seven things 
which I am forbidden to tell, and at all events 
it is no concern of theirs. Whatever their ances- 
tors were, men they are, and I advise them to 
behave as such and act accordingly. But let 
them recollect this, that there are two sides to 
every question, and a downhill as well as an 
uphill road ; and if I can turn beasts into men, 
I can, by the same laws, turn men into beasts. 
You were very near being turned into a beast 
once or twice, little Tom. Indeed, if you had not 
made up your mind to go on this journey and 
see the world, like a man, I am not sure but that 
you would have ended as an eft in a pond.” 

"O dear me!” said Tom, "sooner than that, 
and be all over slime, I ’ll go this minute, if it is 
to the world’s end.” 


[ 195 ] 



CHAPTER VII 

OW,” said Tom, " I am ready to be 
off, if it ’s to the world’s end.” 

" Ah ! ” said the fairy, " that is a 
brave, good boy. But you must go farther than 
the world’s end if you want to find Mr. Grimes, 
for he is at the Other-End-of-Nowhere. You 
must go to Shiny Wall and through the white 
gate that never was opened, and then you will 
come to Peacepool and Mother Carey’s Haven, 
where the good whales go when they die. And 
there Mother Carey will tell you the way to the 
Other-End-of-Nowhere, and there you will find 
Mr. Grimes.” 

"O dear!” said Tom. "But I do not know 
my way to Shiny Wall or where it is at all.” 

" Little boys must take the trouble to find out 
things for themselves or they will never grow 
L196J 



THE WATER BABIES 

to be men ; so that you must ask all the beasts 
in the sea and the birds in the air, and if you 
have been good to them, some of them will tell 
you the way to Shiny Wall.” 

"Well,” said Tom, "it will be a long journey, 
so I had better start at once. Good-by, Miss 
Ellie ; you know I am getting a big boy, and 
I must go out and see the world.” 

" I know you must,” said Ellie, " but you will 
not forget me, Tom. I shall wait here till you 
come.” 

And she shook hands with him and bade him 
good-by. Tom longed very much again to kiss 
her, but he thought it would not be respectful, 
considering she was a lady born, so he promised 
not to forget her; but his little whirlabout of a 
head was so full of the notion of going out to 
see the world, that it forgot her in five minutes. 
However, though his head forgot her, I am glad 
to say his heart did not. 

So he asked all the beasts in the sea and all 
the birds in the air, but none of them knew the 
way to Shiny Wall. For why? He was still too 
far down south. 

Then he met a ship, far larger than he had 
ever seen, — a gallant ocean steamer with a long 
[ 197 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


cloud of smoke trailing behind, — and he won- 
dered how she went on without sails, and swam 
up to her to see. A shoal of dolphins were run- 
ning races round and round her, going three feet 
for her one, and Tom asked them the way to 
Shiny Wall, but they did not know. Then he 
tried to find out how she moved, and at last 
he saw her screw, and was so delighted with it 
that he played under her quarter all day, till 
he nearly had his nose knocked off by the fans 
and thought it time to move. Then he watched 
the sailors upon deck, and the ladies with their 
bonnets and parasols; but none of them could 
see him, because their eyes were not opened — 
as, indeed, most people’s eyes are not. 

And he swam northward again, day after day, 
till at last he met the King of the Herrings, with 
a currycomb growing out of his nose and a sprat 
in his mouth for a cigar, and asked him the way 
to Shiny Wall; so he bolted his sprat headfore- 
most and said : "If I were you, young gentle- 
man, I should go to the Allalonestone and ask 
the last of the Garefowl. She is of a very ancient 
clan — very nearly as ancient as my own — and 
knows a good deal which these moderns don’t, 
as ladies of old houses are likely to do.” 

[198] 


THE WATER BABIES 


Tom asked his way to her, and the King of 
the Herrings told him very kindly, for he was 
a courteous old gentleman of the old school, 
though he was horribly ugly, and strangely be- 
dizened too, like the old dandies who lounge in 
the clubhouse windows. 

But just as Tom had thanked him and set off 
he called after him, "Hi! I say, can you fly ? ” 

" I never tried,” says Tom. " Why? ” 

" Because, if you can, I should advise you to 
say nothing to the old lady about it. There ; 
take a hint. Good-by.” 

And away Tom went for seven days and seven 
nights, due northwest, till he came to a great 
codbank, the like of which he never saw before. 
The great cod lay below in tens of thousands, 
and gobbled shellfish all day long; and the blue 
sharks roved above in hundreds, and gobbled 
them when they came up. So they ate, and ate, 
and ate each other, as they had done since the 
making of the world, for no man had come here 
yet to catch them and find out how rich old 
Mother Carey is. 

And there he saw the last of the Garefowl, 
standing up on the Allalonestone, all alone. And 
a very grand old lady she was, full three feet 
[ l 99 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


high and bolt upright, like some old Highland 
chieftainess. She had on a black velvet gown 
and a white pinner and apron, and a very high 
bridge to her nose (which is a sure mark of high 
breeding), and a large pair of white spectacles on 
it, which made her look rather odd, but it was the 
ancient fashion of her house. And instead of 
wings she had two little feathery arms, with 
which she fanned herself, and complained of the 
dreadful heat ; and she kept on crooning an old 
song to herself, which she learned when she was 
a little baby bird, long ago : 

" Two little birds, they sat on a stone, 

One swam away, and then there was one ; 

With a fal-lal-la-lady. 

" The other swam after, and then there was none, 

And so the poor stone was left all alone ; 

With a fal-lal-la-lady. ” 

It was "flew” away, properly, and not " swam” 
away; but as she could not fly, she had a right 
to alter it. However, it was a very fit song for 
her to sing, because she was a lady herself. 

Tom came up to her very humbly and made 
his bow, and the first thing she said was, " Have 
you wings ? Can you fly ? ” 

[ 200 ] 



THE WATER BABIES 


M O dear, no, ma’am ; I should not think of 
such a thing,” said cunning little Tom. 

"'Then I shall have great pleasure in talking 
to you, my dear. It is quite refreshing nowa- 
days to see anything without wings. They must 
all have wings, forsooth, now, every new upstart 
sort of bird, and fly. What can they want with 
flying and raising themselves above their proper 
station in life? In the days of my ancestors no 
birds ever thought of having wings, and did 
very well without; and now they all laugh at 
me because I keep to the good old fashion.” 

And so she was running on, while Tom tried 
to get in a word edgeways; and at last he did, 
when the old lady got out of breath and began 
fanning herself again ; and then he asked if 
she knew the way to Shiny Wall. 

" Shiny Wall? Who should know better than 
I ? We all came from Shiny Wall, thousands 
of years ago, when it was decently cold and 
the climate was fit for gentlefolk ; but now, 
what with the heat, and what with these vulgar- 
winged things who fly up and down and eat 
everything, so that gentlepeople’s hunting is all 
spoiled, and one really cannot get one’s living 
or hardly venture off the rock for fear of being 
[ 202 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

flown against by some creature that would not 
have dared to come within a mile of one a thou- 
sand years ago — what was I saying? Why, we 
have quite gone down in the world, my dear, 
and have nothing left but our honor. And I 
am the last of my family. A friend of mine and 
I came and settled on this rock when we were 
young, to be out of the way of low people. 
Once we were a great nation and spread over 
all the Northern isles. But men shot us so, and 
knocked us on the head, and took our eggs — 
why, if you will believe it, they say that on the 
coast of Labrador the sailors used to lay a 
plank from the rock on board the thing they 
called their ship, and drive us along the plank 
by hundreds, till we tumbled down into the 
ship’s waist in heaps ; and then, I -suppose, they 
ate us. Well — but — what was I saying? At 
last there were none of us left, except on the 
old Garefowlskerry, just off the Iceland coast, 
up which no man could climb. Even there we 
had no peace ; for one day, when I was quite a 
young girl, the land rocked, and the sea boiled, 
and the sky grew dark, and all the air was filled 
with smoke and dust, and down tumbled the 
old Garefowlskerry into the sea. Some of us 
[203] 


THE WATER BABIES 


were dashed to pieces and some drowned, and 
those who were left got away to Eldey, and the 
dovekies tell me they are all dead now, and 
that another Garefowlskerry has risen out of 
the sea close to the old one, but that it is such 
a poor, flat place that it is not safe to live on ; 
and so here I am left alone.” 

This was the Garefowl’s story, and, strange 
as it may seem, it is every word of it true. 

" But, please, which is the way to Shiny 
Wall?” said Tom. 

" Oh, you must go, my little dear — you must 
go. Let me see — I am sure — that is — really, 
my poor old brains are getting quite puzzled. 
Do you know, my little dear, I am afraid, if you 
want to know, you must ask some of these 
vulgar birds about, for I have quite forgotten.” 

And the poor old Garefowl began to cry tears 
of pure oil, and Tom was quite sorry for her, 
and for himself too, for he was at his wit’s end 
whom to ask. 

But by there came a flock of petrels, who 
are Mother Carey’s own chickens, and Tom 
thought them much prettier than Lady Gare- 
fowl, and so perhaps they were, for Mother Carey 
had had a great deal of fresh experience between 
[204] 


THE WATER BABIES 

the time that she invented the Garefowl and the 
time that she invented them. They flitted along 
like a flock of black swallows, and hopped and 
skipped from wave to wave, lifting up their little 
feet behind them so daintily, and whistling to 
each other so tenderly, that Tom fell in love 
with them at once and called them to know the 
way to Shiny Wall. 

" Shiny Wall? Do you want Shiny Wall? 
Then come with us and we will show you. We 
are Mother Carey’s own chickens, and she sends 
us out over all the seas to show the good birds 
the way home.” 

Tom was delighted, and swam off to them, 
after he had made his bow to the Garefowl. 
But she would not return his bow, but held 
herself bolt upright and wept tears of oil as 
she sang : 

"And so the poor stone was left all alone ; 

With a fal-lal-la-lady.” 

But she was wrong there, for the stone was 
not left all alone, and the next time that Tom 
goes 'by it, he will see a sight worth seeing. 

The old Garefowl is gone already, but there 
are better things come in her place, and when 
Tom comes he will see the fishing smacks 
[205 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


anchored there in hundreds, from Scotland and 
from Ireland and from the Orkneys and the 
Shetlands, and from all the Northern ports, full 
of the children of the old Norse vikings, the 
masters of the sea. And the men will be haul- 
ing in the great cod by thousands, till their 
hands are sore from the lines; and they will 
be making cod-liver oil and guano, and salting 
down the fish ; and there will be a man-of-war 
steamer there to protect them, and a lighthouse 
to show them the way; and you and I, perhaps, 
shall go some day to the Allalonestone to the 
great summer sea fair, and dredge strange crea- 
tures such as man never saw before. That is 
what Tom will see, and perhaps you and I shall 
see it, too. And then we shall not be sorry be- 
cause we cannot get a garefowl to stuff, much 
less find garefowl enough to drive them into 
stone pens and slaughter them, as the old 
Norsemen did, or drive them on board along a 
plank till the ship was victualed with them, as 
the old English and French rovers used to do. 

And now Tom was all agog to start for 
Shiny Wall, but the petrels said no, they must 
go first to Allfowlsness and wait there for the 
great gathering of all the sea birds before they 
[206] 


THE WATER BABIES 

start for their summer breeding places far away 
in the Northern isles, and there they would be 
sure to find some birds which were going to 
Shiny Wall; but where Allfowlsness was he 
must promise never to tell, lest men should 
go there and shoot the birds, and stuff them, 
and put them into stupid museums, instead of 
leaving them to play and breed and work in 
Mother Carey’s water garden, where they ought 
to be. 

So where Allfowlsness is nobody must know, 
and all that is to be said about it is that Tom 
waited there many days. 

And after a while the birds began to gather 
in thousands and tens of thousands, blackening 
all the air — swans and brant geese, harlequins 
and eiders, harelds and garganeys, smews and 
goosanders, divers and loons, grebes and dove- 
kies, auks and razorbills, gannets and petrels, 
skuas and terns, with gulls beyond all naming 
or numbering ; and they paddled and washed 
and splashed and combed and brushed them- 
selves on the sand till the shore was white with 
feathers ; and they quacked and clucked and gab- 
bled and chattered and screamed and whooped 
as they talked over matters with their friends 
[207] 


THE WATER BABIES 


and settled where they were to go and breed 
that summer, till you might have heard them 
ten miles off. 

Then the petrels asked this bird and that 
whether they would take Tom to Shiny Wall, 
but one set was going to Sutherland, and one 
to the Shetlands, and one to Norway, and one 
to Spitzbergen, and one to Iceland, and one to 
Greenland, but none would go to Shiny Wall. 
So the good-natured petrels said that they would 
show him part of the way themselves, but they 
were only going as far as Jan Mayen’s Land, 
and after that he must shift for himself. 

And then all the birds rose up and streamed 
away in long, black lines, north and northeast 
and northwest, across the bright blue summer 
sky; and their cry was like ten thousand packs 
of hounds and ten thousand peals of bells. Only 
the puffins stayed behind and killed the young 
rabbits and laid their eggs in the rabbit burrows 
— which was rough practice, certainly, but a man 
must see to his own family. 

And as Tom and the petrels went northeast- 
ward it began to blow right hard, for the old 
gentleman in the gray greatcoat, who looks after 
the big copper boiler in the Gulf of Mexico, had 
[208] 


THE WATER BABIES 

got behindhand with his work ; so Mother Carey 
had sent an electric message to him for more 
steam, and now the steam was coming, as much 
in an hour as ought to have come in a week, 
puffing and roaring and swishing and swirling 
till you could not see where the sky ended and 
the sea began. But Tom and the petrels never 
cared, for the gale was right abaft ; and away 
they went over the crests of the billows, as merry 
as so many flying fish. 

And at last they saw an ugly sight — the black 
side of a great ship, water-logged in the trough of 
the sea. Her funnel and her masts were over- 
board, and swayed and surged under her lee ; 
her decks were swept as clean as a barn floor, 
and there was no living soul on board. 

The petrels flew up to her and wailed round 
her, for they were very sorry indeed, and also 
they expected to find some salt pork; and Tom 
scrambled on board of her and looked round, 
frightened and sad. 

And there, in a little cot lashed tight under 
the bulwark, lay a baby fast asleep. 

He went up to it and wanted to wake it ; but 
behold, from under the cot out jumped a little 
black-and-tan terrier dog, and began barking and 
[209] 


THE WATER BABIES 

snapping at Tom and would not let him touch 
the cot. 

Tom knew the dog’s teeth could not hurt him, 
but at least it could shove him away, and did ; 
and he and the dog fought and struggled, for he 
wanted to help the baby and did not want to 
throw the poor dog overboard ; but as they were 
struggling, there came a tall green sea and walked 
in over the weather side of the ship and swept 
them all into the waves. 

" Oh, the baby, the baby ! ” screamed Tom ; but 
the next moment he did not scream at all, for he 
saw the cot settling down through the green water, 
with the baby smiling in it, fast asleep ; and he 
saw the fairies come up from below and carry 
baby and cradle gently down in their soft arms; 
and then he knew it was all right, and that there 
would be a new water baby in St. Brendan’s Isle. 

And the poor little dog ? 

Why, after he had kicked and coughed a little, 
he sneezed so hard that he sneezed himself clean 
out of his skin and turned into a water dog, and 
jumped and danced round Tom, and ran over the 
crests of the waves, and snapped at the jellyfish 
and the mackerel, and followed Tom the whole 
way to the Other-End-of-Nowhere. 

[210] 




THE WATER BABIES 


Then they went on again till they began to see 
the peak of Jan Mayen’s Land, standing up like 
a white sugar loaf, two miles above the clouds. 

And there they fell in with a whole flock of 
mollymauks, who were feeding on a dead whale. 

" These are the fellows to show you the way,” 
said Mother Carey’s chickens ; " we cannot help 
you further north. We don’t like to get among 
the ice pack, for fear it should nip our toes ; but 
the mollies dare fly anywhere.” 

So the petrels called to the mollies, but they 
were so busy and greedy, gobbling and pecking 
and spluttering and fighting over the blubber, 
that they did not take the least notice. 

" Come, come,” said the petrels, " you lazy, 
greedy lubbers, this young gentleman is going to 
Mother Carey, and if you don’t attend on him, 
you won’t earn your discharge from her, you 
know.” 

" Greedy we are,” says a great, fat old molly, 
" but lazy we ain’t ; and as for lubbers, we ’re no 
more lubbers than you. Let’s have a look at 
the lad.” 

And he flapped right into Tom’s face and 
stared at him in the most impudent way (for 
the mollies are audacious fellows, as all whalers 
[ 212 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


know), and then asked him where he hailed from 
and what land he sighted last. 

And when Tom told him, he seemed pleased, 
and said he was a good-plucked one to have got 
so far. 

" Come along, lads,” he said to the rest, " and 
give this little chap a cast over the pack, for 
Mother Carey’s sake. We’ve eaten blubber 
enough for to-day, and we ’ll e’en work out a bit 
of our time by helping the lad.” 

So the mollies took Tom up on their backs 
and flew off with him, laughing and joking — and 
oh, how they did smell of train oil ! 

" Who are you, you jolly birds? ” asked Tom. 

"We are the spirits of the old Greenland skip- 
pers (as every sailor knows), who hunted here, 
right whales and horse whales, full hundreds of 
years agone. But because we were saucy and 
greedy, we were all turned into mollies, to eat 
whales’ blubber all our days. But lubbers we are 
none, and could sail a ship now against any man 
in the north seas, though we don’t hold with this 
newfangled steam. And it ’s a shame of those 
black imps of petrels to call us so ; but because 
they ’re her grace’s pets, they think they may say 
anything they like. 


[ 2I 3] 


THE WATER BABIES 


And now they came to the edge of the pack, 
and beyond it they could see Shiny Wall looming 
through mist and snow and storm. But the ice 
giants fought and roared and leaped upon each 
other’s backs, and ground each other to powder, so 
that Tom was afraid to venture among them, lest 
he should be ground to powder, too. And he was 
the more afraid when he saw lying among the ice 
pack the wrecks of many a gallant ship — some 
with masts and yards all standing, some with the 
seamen frozen fast on board. Alas, alas, for them ! 
They were all true hearts, and they came to their 
end like good knights-errant, in searching for the 
white gate that never was opened yet. 

But the good mollies took Tom and his dog 
^up, and flew with them safe over the pack and 
the roaring ice giants, and set them down at the 
foot of Shiny Wall. 

"And where is the gate? ” asked Tom. 

" There is no gate,” said the mollies. 

"No gate? ” said Tom aghast. 

"None; never a crack of one, and that’s the 
whole of the secret, as better fellows, lad, than 
you have found to their cost; and if there had 
been, they ’d have killed by now every right 
whale that swims the sea.” 

[ 2I 4 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

" What am I to do, then ? ” 

" Dive under the floe, to be sure, if you have 
pluck.” 

" I ’ve not come so far to turn now,” said Tom ; 
" so here goes for a header.” 

"A lucky voyage to you, lad,” said the mollies ; 
"we knew you were one of the right sort. So 
good-by.” 

" Why don’t you come, too ? ” asked Tom. 

But the mollies only wailed sadly, "We can’t 
go yet, we can’t go yet,” and flew over the pack. 

So Tom dived under the great white gate 
which never was opened yet, and went on in 
black darkness, at the bottom of the sea, for 
seven days and seven nights. And yet he was 
not a bit frightened. Why should he be? He 
was a brave lad, whose business was to go out 
and see all the world. 

And at last he saw the light, and clear, clear 
water overhead ; and up he came a thousand 
fathoms, among clouds of sea moths, which 
fluttered round his head. There were moths 
with pink heads and wings and opal bodies, that 
flapped about slowly; moths with brown wings, 
that flapped about quickly; yellow shrimps, that 
hopped and skipped most quickly of all ; and 
[ 2I 5 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


jellies of all colors, that neither hopped nor skipped, 
but only dawdled and yawned, and would not get 
out of his way. The dog snapped at them till his 
jaws were tired, but Tom hardly minded them at 
all, he was so eager to get to the top of the water 
and see the pool where the good whales go. 

And a very large pool it was, miles and miles 
across, though the air was so clear that the ice 
cliffs on the opposite side looked as if they were 
close at hand. All round it the ice cliffs rose, 
in walls and spires and battlements, and caves 
and bridges, and stories and galleries, in which 
the ice fairies live and drive away the storms 
and clouds, that Mother Carey’s pool may lie 
calm from year’s end to year’s end. And the 
sun acted policeman, and walked round outside 
every day, peeping just over the top of the ice 
wall to see that all went right ; and now and 
then he played conjuring tricks, or had an exhi- 
bition of fireworks, to amuse the ice fairies. 
For he would make himself into four or five 
suns at once, or paint the sky with rings and 
crosses and crescents of white fire, and stick 
himself in the middle of them and wink at the 
fairies; and I dare say they were very much 
amused, for anything ’s fun in the country. 

[216] 


THE WATER BABIES 


And there the good whales lay, the happy, 
sleepy beasts, upon the still, oily sea. They were 
all right whales, you must know, and tinners 
and razorbacks and bottlenoses and spotted sea 
unicorns with long ivory horns. But the sperm 
whales are such raging, ramping, roaring fellows 
that if Mother Carey let them in, there would 
be no more peace in Peacepool. So she packs 
them away in a great pond by themselves at 
the South Pole, two hundred and sixty-three 
miles south-southeast of Mount Erebus, the 
great volcano in the ice; and there they butt 
each other with their ugly noses day and night 
from year’s end to year’s end. 

But here there were only good, quiet beasts, 
lying about like the black hulls of sloops and 
blowing every now and then jets of white steam, 
or sculling round with their huge mouths open 
for the sea moths to swim down their throats. 
They were quite safe and happy there, and all 
they had to do was to wait quietly in Peacepool 
till Mother Carey sent for them to make them 
out of old beasts into new. 

Tom swam up to the nearest whale and asked 
the way to Mother Carey. 

" There she sits in the middle,” said the whale. 

[217] 


THE WATER BABIES 

Tom looked, but he could see nothing in the 
middle of the pool but one peaked iceberg; and 
he said so. 

" That s Mother Carey,” said the whale, " as 
you will find when you get to her. There she sits 
making old beasts into new all the year round.” 

" How does she do that ? ” 

" That ’s her concern, not mine,” said the old 
whale, and yawned so wide (for he was very 
large) that there swam into his mouth 943 sea 
moths, 13,846 jellyfish no bigger than pins’ 
heads, a string of salpae 9 yards long, and 43 
little ice crabs, who gave each other a parting 
pinch all round, tucked their legs under their 
stomachs, and determined to die decently, like 
Julius Caesar. 

" I suppose,” said Tom," she cuts up a great 
whale like you into a whole shoal of porpoises ? ” 

At which the old whale laughed so violently 
that he coughed up all the creatures, who swam 
away again, very thankful at having escaped out 
of that terrible whalebone net of his; and Tom 
went on to the iceberg, wondering. 

And when he came near it, it took the form of 
the grandest old lady he had ever seen — a white 
marble lady, sitting on a white marble throne. 

[218] 




THE WATER BABIES 


And from the foot of the throne there swam 
away, out and out into the sea, millions of new- 
born creatures, of more shapes and colors than 
man ever dreamed. And they were Mother 
Carey’s children, whom she makes out of the 
sea water all day long. 

He expected, of course (like some grown 
people who ought to know better), to find her 
snipping, piecing, fitting, stitching, cobbling, bast- 
ing, filing, planing, hammering, turning, polish- 
ing, molding, measuring, chiseling, clipping, and 
so forth, as men do when they go to work to 
make anything. 

But instead of that, she sat quite still, with her 
chin upon her hand, looking down into the sea 
with two great, grand blue eyes, as blue as the 
sea itself. Her hair was as white as the snow, 
for she was very, very old — in fact, as old as 
anything which you are likely to come across, 
except the difference between right and wrong. 

And when she saw Tom, she looked at him 
very kindly. 

" What do you want, my little man? It is long 
since I have seen a water baby here.” 

Tom told her his errand and asked the way 
to the Other-End-of-Nowhere. 

[ 2 2o ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

" You ought to know yourself, for you have 
been there already.” 

" Have I, ma’am? I ’m sure I forgot all about 
it,” said Tom. 

" Then look at me.” 

And as Tom looked into her great blue eyes, 
he recollected the way perfectly. 

Now, was not that strange? 

"Thank you, ma’am,” said Tom. "Then I 
won’t trouble your ladyship any more. I hear 
you are very busy ? ” 

" I am never more busy than I am now,” she 
said, without stirring a finger. 

" I heard, ma’am, that you were always making 
new beasts out of old.” 

" So people fancy. But I am not going to 
trouble myself to make things, my little dear. 
I sit here and make them make themselves.” 

" You are a clever fairy, indeed,” thought Tom. 
And he was quite right. 

That is a grand trick of good old Mother 
Carey’s, and a grand answer, which she has had 
occasion to make several times to impertinent 
people. 

There was once, for instance, a fairy who was 
so clever that she found out how to make 
[221 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


butterflies. I don’t mean sham ones — no, but real 
live ones, which would fly and eat and lay eggs 
and do everything that they ought; and she was 
so proud of her skill that she went flying straight 
off to the North Pole, to boast to Mother Carey 
how she could make butterflies. 

But Mother Carey laughed. 

" Know, silly child,” she said, " that anyone 
can make things, if they will take time and 
trouble enough ; but it is not everyone who, 
like me, can make things make themselves.” 

But people do not yet believe that Mother 
Carey is as clever as all that comes to, and 
they will not till they too go the journey to the 
Other-End-of-Nowhere. 

" And now, my pretty little man,” said Mother 
Carey, " you are sure you know the way to the 
Other-End-of-Nowhere ? ” 

Tom thought; and behold, he had forgotten 
it utterly. 

" That is because you took your eyes off me.” 

Tom looked at her again and recollected, and 
then looked away and forgot in an instant. 

" But what am I to do, ma’am ? For I can’t 
keep looking at you when I am somewhere 
else.” 


[ 222 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


"You must do without me, as most people 
have to do for nine hundred and ninety-nine 
thousandths of their lives, and look at the dog 
instead ; for he knows the way well enough, and 
will not forget it. Besides, you may meet some 
very queer-tempered people there, who will not 
let you pass without this passport of mine, which 
you must hang round your neck and take care 
of ; and of course, as the dog will always go be- 
hind you, you must go the whole way backward.” 

"Backward!” cried Tom. "Then I shall not 
be able to see my way.” 

" On the contrary, if you look forward you 
will not see a step before you, and be certain 
to go wrong; but if you look behind you and 
watch carefully whatever you have passed, and 
especially keep your eye on the dog, who goes 
by instinct and therefore can’t go wrong, then 
you will know what is coming next as plainly 
as if you saw it in a looking-glass.” 

Tom was very much astonished, but he obeyed 
her, for he had learned always to believe what 
the fairies told him. 

" So it is, my dear child,” said Mother Carey, 
" and I will tell you a story, which will show you 
that I am perfectly right, as it is my custom to be. 

[ 223 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


" Once on a time there were two brothers. 
One was called Prometheus, because he always 
looked before him and boasted that he was wise 
beforehand. The other was called Epimetheus, 
because he always looked behind him and did 
not boast at all, but said humbly that he had 
sooner prophesy after the event. 

" Well, Prometheus was a very clever fellow, of 
course, and invented all sorts of wonderful things. 
But unfortunately, when they were set to work, to 
work was just what they would not do ; wherefore 
very little has come of them and very little is left 
of them, and now nobody knows what they were. 

" But Epimetheus was a very slow fellow, 
certainly, and went among men for a clod, and 
a muff, and a slowcoach, and so forth. And very 
little he did for many years, but what he did 
he never had to do over again. 

" And what happened at last ? There came 
to the two brothers the most beautiful creature 
that ever was seen, Pandora by name, which 
means 'All the gifts of the gods.’ But because 
she had a strange box in her hand, Prometheus, 
who was always settling what was going to 
happen, would have nothing to do with pretty 
Pandora and her box. 

[224] 


THE WATER BABIES 

" But Epimetheus took her and it, as he took 
everything that came, and married her for better 
or worse. And they opened the box between 
them, of course, to see what was inside, for else 
of what possible use could it have been to 
them ? 

" And out flew all the ills which flesh is heir 
to — all the children of the four great bogies, 
Self-will, Ignorance, Fear, and Dirt, and, worst 
of all, Naughty Boys and Girls; but one thing 
remained at the bottom of the box, and that 
was Hope. 

" So Epimetheus got a great deal of trouble, 
as most men do in this world, but he got the 
three best things in the world into the bargain 
— a good wife, and experience, and hope ; while 
Prometheus had just as much trouble, and a 
great deal more (as you will hear) of his own 
making, with nothing besides save fancies spun 
out of his own brain, as a spider spins her web 
out of her stomach. 

" And Prometheus kept on looking before him 
so far ahead that as he was running about with 
a box of lucifers (which were the only useful 
things he ever invented, and even they do as 
much harm as good), he trod on his own nose 
[225] 


THE WATER BABIES 


and tumbled down, whereby he set the Thames 
on fire, and they have hardly put it out again 
yet. So he had to be chained to the top of a 
mountain, with a vulture by him to give him 
a peck whenever he stirred, lest he should turn 
the whole world upside down with his prophecies 
and his theories. 

" But stupid old Epimetheus went working 
and grubbing on, with the help of his wife Pan- 
dora, always looking behind him to see what 
had happened, till he really learned to know 
now and then what would happen next, and 
understood so well which side his bread was 
buttered, and which way the cat jumped, that 
he began to make things which would work, 
and go on working, too — to till and drain the 
ground and to make looms and ships and rail- 
roads and steam plows and electric telegraphs 
and all the things which you see in the great 
exhibitions, and to foretell famine and bad 
weather and the price of stocks, till at last he 
grew as rich as a Jew and as fat as a farmer, 
and people thought twice before they meddled 
with him, but only once before they asked him 
to help them, for because he earned his money 
well, he could afford to spend it well likewise. 

[226] 


THE WATER BABIES 


" And his children are the men of science, 
who get good, lasting work done in the world; 
but the children of Prometheus are the theorists 
and the bores and the noisy, windy people, who 
go telling silly folk what will happen instead of 
looking to see what has happened already.” 

Now was not Mother Carey’s a wonderful 
story? And, I am happy to say, Tom believed 
it every word. 

For so it happened to Tom likewise. He was 
very sorely tried for though, by keeping the 
dog to heels (or rather to toes, for he had to 
walk backward), he could see pretty well which 
way the dog was hunting, yet it was much 
slower work to go backward than to go forward. 

But I .am proud to say that, though Tom 
had not been at Cambridge, he was such a little 
dogged, hard, gnarly, foursquare brick of a boy 
that he never turned his head round once all 
the way from Peacepool to the Other-End-of- 
Nowhere, but kept his eye on the dog and let 
him pick out the scent, hot or cold, straight or 
crooked, wet or dry, up hill or down dale ; by 
which means he never made a single mistake, 
and saw wonderful and hitherto by-no-mortal- 
man-imagined things. 

[227] 



CHAPTER VIII 

AND LAST 

IT 1TERE begins the never-to-be-too-much- 
= studied account of the nine-hundred- 
JL jLL and-ninety-ninth part of the wonderful 
things which Tom saw on his journey to the 
Other-End-of-Nowhere ; which all good little chil- 
dren are requested to read, that if eve-r they get 
to the Other-End-of-Nowhere, as they may very 
probably do, they may not burst out laughing, or 
try to run away, or do any other silly, vulgar thing 
which may offend Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid. 

Now, as soon as Tom had left Peacepool, he 
came to the white lap of the great sea mother, ten 
thousand fathoms deep, where she makes world 
pap all day long, for the steam giants to knead 
and the fire giants to bake till it has risen and 
hardened into mountain loaves and island cakes. 

[ 228 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


And there Tom was very near being kneaded 
up in the world pap and turned into a fossil water 
baby, which would have astonished the Geological 
Society of New Zealand some hundreds of thou- 
sands of years hence. For as he walked along in 
the silence of the sea twilight, on the soft, white 
ocean floor, he was aware of a hissing and a roar- 
ing and a thumping and a pumping as of all the 
steam engines in the world at once. And when 
he came near, the water grew boiling hot; not 
that that hurt him in the least, but it also grew 
as foul as gruel, and every moment he stumbled 
over dead shells and fish and sharks and seals 
and whales, which had been killed by the hot 
water. 

And at last he came to the great sea serpent 
himself, lying dead at the bottom, and as he was 
too thick to scramble over, Tom had to walk 
round him three quarters of a mile and more, 
which put him out of his path sadly; and when 
he had got round, he came to the place called 
Stop. And there he stopped, and just in time. 
For he was on the edge of a vast hole in the 
bottom of the sea, up which was rushing and 
roaring clear steam enough to work all the en- 
gines in the world at once — so clear, indeed, 
[229] 


THE WATER BABIES 


that it was quite light at moments, and Tom 
could see almost up to the top of the water 
above, and down below into the pit for nobody 
knows how far. 

But as soon as he bent his head over the edge, 
he got such a rap on the nose from pebbles, that 
he jumped back again ; for the steam, as it rushed 
up, rasped away the sides of the hole and hurled 
it up into the sea in a shower of mud and gravel 
and ashes ; and then it spread all around, and 
sank again, and covered in the dead fish so fast 
that before Tom had stood there five minutes he 
was buried in silt up to his ankles, and began 
to be afraid that he should have been buried 
alive. 

And perhaps he would have been, but that 
while he was thinking, the whole piece of ground 
on which he stood was torn off and blown up- 
ward, and away flew Tom a mile up through 
the sea, wondering what was coming next. 

At last he stopped — thump ! and found him- 
self tight in the legs of the most wonderful bogy 
which he had ever seen. 

It had I don’t know how many wings as big as 
the sails of a windmill, and spread out in a ring 
like them ; and with them it hovered over the 
[ 230] 


THE WATER BABIES 


steam which rushed up, as a ball hovers over the 
top of a fountain. And for every wing above, it 
had a leg below, with a claw like a comb at the 
tip, and a nostril at the root ; and in the middle 
it had no stomach and one eye; and as for its 
mouth, that was all on one side. Well, it was a 
very strange beast, but no stranger than some 
dozens which you may see. 

" What do you want here,” it cried quite peev- 
ishly, " getting in my way ? ” and it tried to drop 
Tom; but he held on tight to its claws, thinking 
himself safer where he was. 

So Tom told him who he was, and what his 
errand was. And the thing winked its one eye 
and sneered : " I am too old to be taken in in 
that way. You are come after gold — I know 
you are.” 

" Gold! What is gold?” And really Tom did 
not know, but the suspicious old bogy would not 
believe him. 

But after a while Tom began to understand a 
little. For as the vapors came up out of the 
hole the bogy smelled them with his nostrils 
and combed them and sorted them with his 
combs ; and then, when they steamed up through 
them against his wings, they were changed into 

[231 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


showers and streams of metal. From one wing 
fell gold dust, and from another silver, and from 
another copper, and from another tin, and from 
another lead, and so on, and sank into the soft 
mud, into veins and cracks, and hardened there. 
Whereby it came to pass that the rocks are full 
of metal. 

But all of a sudden somebody shut off the 
steam below, and the hole was left empty in an 
instant; and then down rushed the water into 
the hole, in such a whirlpool that the bogy spun 
round and round as fast as a teetotum. But 
that was all in his day’s work, like a fair fall with 
the hounds, so all he did was to say to Tom, 
" Now is your time, youngster, to get down, if 
you are in earnest, which I don’t believe.” 

"You’ll soon see,” said Tom, and away he 
went, as bold as Baron Munchausen, and shot 
down the rushing cataract like a salmon at 
Ballisodare. 

And when he got to the bottom, he swam till 
he was washed on shore safe upon the Other- 
End-of-Nowhere ; and he found it, to his surprise, 
as most other people do, much more like This- 
End-of-Somewhere than he had been in the 
habit of expecting. 


[ 2 32 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

And first he went through Waste-paper-land, 
where all the stupid books lie in heaps, up hill 
and down dale, like leaves in a winter wood ; 
and there he saw people digging and grubbing 
among them, to make worse books out of bad 
ones, and thrashing chaff to save the dust of 
it ; and a very good trade they drove thereby, 
especially among children. 

Then he went by the Sea of Slops to the 
Mountain of Messes and the Territory of Tuck, 
where the ground was very sticky, for it was all 
made of bad toffee (not Everton toffee, of course) 
and full of deep cracks and holes choked with 
wind-fallen fruit, and green gooseberries, and 
sloes, and crabs, and whinberries, and hips, and 
haws, and all the bad things which little children 
will eat if they can get them. But the fairies 
hide them out of the way in that country as 
fast as they can; and very hard work they have, 
and of very little use it is. For as fast as they 
hide away the old trash, foolish and wicked 
people make fresh trash full of lime and poison- 
ous paints, and actually go and steal receipts 
out of old Madame Science’s big book to invent 
poisons for little children, and sell them at fairs 
and tuckshops. Very well. Let them go on. 

[ 2 33 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

But the fairy with the birch rod will catch them 
all in time, and make them begin at one corner 
of their shops and eat their way out at the other ; 
by which time .they will have got such stomach 
aches as will cure them of poisoning little 
children. 

Next he saw all the little people in the world, 
writing all the little books in the world, about 
all the other little people in the world, prob- 
ably because they had no great people to write 
about ; and if the names of the books were not 
" Squeeky,” nor the " Pumplighter,” nor the " Nar- 
row, Narrow World,” nor the " Hills of the Chat- 
termuch,” nor the "Children’s Twaddeday,” why, 
then they were something else. And all the rest 
of the little people in the world read the books 
and thought themselves each as good as the 
President ; and perhaps they were right, for 
everyone knows his own business best. But 
Tom thought he would sooner have a jolly good 
fairy tale about Jack the Giant Killer or Beauty 
and the Beast, which taught him something that 
he did n’t know already. 

And next he came to the center of creation 
(the hub, they call it there), which lies in latitude 
42.2 1° south and longitude 108.56° east. 

f 2 34 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

Then Tom came to the Island of Poluprag- 
mosyne, which some call Rogues’ Harbor (but 
they are wrong, for that is in the middle of 
Bramshill Bushes, and the county police have 
cleared it out long ago). There everyone knows 
his neighbor’s business better than his own ; 
and a very noisy place it is, as might be ex- 
pected, considering that all the inhabitants are 
ex officio on the wrong side of the house in the 
" Parliament of Man and the Federation of the 
World,” and are always making wry mouths 
and crying that the fairies’ grapes were sour. 

There Tom saw plows drawing horses, nails 
driving hammers, birds’ nests taking boys, books 
making authors, bulls keeping china shops, 
monkeys shaving cats, dead dogs drilling live 
lions, and, in short, everyone set to doing some- 
thing which he had not learned, because in what 
he had learned, or pretended to learn, he had 
failed. 

When he got into the middle of the town, they 
all set on him at once to show him his way, or 
rather to show him that he did not know his 
way; for as for asking him what way he wanted 
to go, no one ever thought of that. 

But one pulled him hither, and another poked 
[ 2 35 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


him thither, and a third cried, " You mustn’t go 
west, I tell you ; it is destruction to go west.” 

" But I am not going west, as you may see,” 
said Tom. 

And another, " The east lies here, my dear ; 
I assure you this is the east.” 

" But I don’t want to go east,” said Tom. 

" Well, then, at all events, whichever way you 
are going, you are going wrong,” cried they all 
with one voice — which was the only thing which 
they ever agreed about ; and all pointed at once 
to all the thirty-and-two points of the compass, 
till Tom thought all the signposts in England 
had got together and fallen fighting. 

And whether he would have ever escaped out 
of the town, it is hard to say, if the dog had not 
taken it into his head that they were going to 
pull his master in pieces, and tackled them so 
sharply that he gave them some business of their 
own to think of at last ; and while they were 
rubbing their bitten calves, Tom and the dog 
got safe away. 

On the borders of that island he found Gotham, 
where the wise men live — the same who dragged 
the pond because the moon had fallen into it, 
and planted a hedge round the cuckoo to keep 
[236] 


THE WATER BABIES 

spring all the year. And he found them bricking 
up the town gate, because it was so wide that 
little folks could not get through. So he went 
on, for it was no business of his; only he could 
not help saying that in his country, if the kitten 
could not get in at the same hole as the cat, she 
might stay outside and mew. 

But he saw the end of such fellows when he 
came to the Island of the Golden Asses, where 
nothing but thistles grow. For there they were 
all turned into mokes with ears a yard long, for 
meddling with matters which they do not under- 
stand, as Lucius did in the story. And like him, 
mokes they must remain, till the thistles develop 
into roses. Till then they must comfort them- 
selves with the thought that the longer their 
ears are, the thicker their hides, and so a good 
beating does n’t hurt them. 

Then came Tom to the great land of Hearsay, 
in which are no less than thirty-and-odd kings, 
besides half a dozen republics, and perhaps more 
by next mail. 

And there he fell in with a deep, dark, deadly, 
and destructive war, waged by the princes and 
potentates of those parts against what do you 
think ? One thing I am sure of, that unless I 
[ 237 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


told you, you would never know, nor how they 
waged that war either, for all their strategy and 
art military consisted in the safe and easy process 
of stopping their ears and screaming, " Oh, don’t 
tell us ! ” and then running away. 

So when Tom came into that land, he found 
them all, high and low, man, woman, and child, 
running for their lives day and night continually, 
and entreating not to be told they did n’t know 
what; only, the land being an island, and they 
having a dislike to the water (a musty lot for the 
most part), they ran round and round the shore 
forever, which (as the island was exactly the same 
circumference as the planet on which we have 
the honor of living) was hard work, especially 
to those who had business to look after. 

And running after them, day and night, came 
such a poor, lean, seedy, hard-worked old giant 
as ought to have been cockered up and had a 
good dinner given him, and a good wife found 
him, and been set to play with little children ; 
and then he would have been a very presentable 
old fellow after all ; for he had a heart, though 
it was considerably overgrown with brains. 

Away all the good folks ran from him, except 
Tom, who stood his ground and dodged between 
[238] 


THE WATER BABIES 


his legs; and the giant, when he had passed 
him, looked down and cried, as if he was quite 
pleased and comforted : " What ? Who are you ? 
And you actually don’t run away like all the 
rest ? ” But he had to take his spectacles off, 
Tom remarked, in order to see him plainly. 

Tom told him who he was, and the giant 
pulled out a bottle and a cork instantly, to 
collect him with. 

But Tom was too sharp for that, and dodged 
between his legs and in front of him ; and then 
the giant could not see him at all. 

" No, no, no ! ” said Tom, " I ’ve not been 
round the world and through the world and up 
to Mother Carey’s haven, besides being caught in 
a net and called a holothurian and a cephalopod, 
to be bottled up by any old giant like you.” 

And when the giant understood what a great 
traveler Tom had been, he made a truce with 
him at once, and would have kept him there to 
this day, so delighted was he at finding anyone 
to tell him what he did not know before. 

" Ah, you lucky little dog ! ” said he at last, 
quite simply, — for he was the simplest, pleasant- 
est, honestest, kindliest old Dominie Sampson 
of a giant that ever turned the world upside 

[239] 


THE WATER BABIES 

down without intending it, — "ah, you lucky 
little dog! if I had only been where you have 
been, to see what you have seen ! ” 

"Well,” said Tom, "if you want to do that, 
you had best put your head under water for 
a few hours, as I did, and turn into a water 
baby, or some other baby, and then you might 
have a chance.” 

"Turn into a baby, eh? If I could do that, and 
know what was happening to me for but one 
hour, I should know everything then and be 
at rest. But I can’t; I can’t be a little child 
again; and I suppose if I could, it would be 
no use, because then I should know nothing 
about what was happening to me. Ah, you 
lucky little dog ! ” said the poor old giant. 

" But why do you run after all these poor 
people?” said Tom, who liked the giant very 
much. 

" My dear, it ’s they that have been running 
after me, father and son, for hundreds and hun- 
dreds of years, throwing stones at me till they 
have knocked off my spectacles fifty times, and 
hunting me round and round (though catch 
me they can’t, for every time I go over the 
same ground I go the faster and grow the bigger) ; 

[240] 




THE WATER BABIES 


while all I want is to be friends with them 
and to tell them something to their advantage, 
only somehow they are so strangely afraid of 
hearing it.” 

" But why don’t you turn round and tell 
them so ? ” 

" Because I can’t. You see, I am one of the 
sons of Epimetheus and must go backward if 
I am to go at all.” 

" Well,” thought Tom, " this is no business 
of mine.” 

And no more it was, because he was a water 
baby. 

So the giant ran round after the people, and 
the people ran round after the giant, and they 
are running unto this day, for aught I know 
or do not know, and will run till either he or 
they or both turn into little children. And then, 
as Shakespeare says (and therefore it must be 
true), 

Jack shall have Gill ; 

Nought shall go ill ; 

The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well. 

Then Tom came to a very famous island, 
which was called, in the days of the great trav- 
eler Captain Gulliver, the Isle of Laputa. But 
[242] 


THE WATER BABIES 


Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid has named it over again, 
the Isle of Tomtoddies, all heads and no bodies. 

And when Tom came near it, he heard such 
a grumbling and grunting and growling and 
wailing and weeping and whining that he thought 
people must be ringing little pigs, or cropping 
puppies’ ears, or drowning kittens ; but when 
he came nearer still, he began to hear words 
among the noise, which was the Tomtoddies’ 
song which they sing morning and evening, 
and all night too, to their great idol Examination, 

" I can’t learn my lesson ; the Examiner ’s coming ! ” 

And that was the only song which they knew. 

And when Tom got on shore, the first thing 
he saw was a great pillar, on one side of which 
was inscribed, " Playthings not allowed here ” ; 
at which he was so shocked that he would not 
stay to see what was written on the other side. 
Then he looked round for the people of the 
island, but instead of men, women, and children 
he found nothing but turnips and radishes, beet 
and mangel-wurzel, without a single green leaf 
among them, and half of them burst and decayed, 
with toadstools growing out of them. Those 
which were left began crying to Tom, in half 
[ 243 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

a dozen different languages at once, and all 
of them badly spoken, " I can’t learn my lesson; 
do come and help me ! ” 

And one cried, " Can you show me how to 
extract this square root ? ” 

And another, " Can you tell me the distance 
between a Lyrae and /3 Camelopardalis ? ” 

And another, " What is the latitude and longi- 
tude of Snooksville, in Noman’s County, Oregon, 
United States?” 

And another, " What was the name of Mucius 
Scaevola’s thirteenth cousin’s grandmother’s maid’s 
cat ? ” 

And another, " Can you tell me the name 
of a place that nobody ever heard of, where 
nothing ever happened, in a country which has 
not been discovered yet ? ” 

And so on, and so on, and so on. 

" And what good on earth will it do you 
if I did tell you?” quoth Tom. 

Well, they didn’t know that; all they knew 
was, the Examiner was coming. 

Then Tom stumbled on the hugest and softest 
turnip you ever saw filling a hole in a crop of 
Swedes, and it cried to him, " Can you tell me 
anything at all about anything you like ? ” 

[ 244 ] 



THE WATER BABIES 


" About what?” says Tom. 

" About anything you like, for as fast as I 
learn things I forget them again ; so my mamma 
says that I must go in for general information.” 

Tom told him that he did not know General 
Information, nor any officers in the army, only 
he had a friend once that went for a drummer; 
but he could tell him a great many strange 
things which he had seen in his travels. 

So he told him prettily enough, while the poor 
turnip listened very carefully; and the more he 
listened, the more he forgot and the more water 
ran out of him. 

Tom thought he was crying, but it was only 
his poor brains running away, from being worked 
so hard; and as Tom talked, the unhappy turnip 
streamed down all over with juice, and split 
and shrank till nothing was left of him but 
rind and water; whereat Tom ran away in a 
fright, for he thought he might be taken up 
for killing the turnip. 

But, on the contrary, the turnip’s parents were 
highly delighted, and considered him a saint 
and a martyr, and put up a long inscription over 
his tomb about his wonderful talents, early 
development, and unparalleled precocity. Were 
[246] 


THE WATER BABIES 

they not a foolish couple ? But there was a still 
more foolish couple next to them, who were 
beating a wretched little radish, no bigger than 
my thumb, for sullenness and obstinacy and 
willful stupidity, and never knew that the reason 
why it could n’t learn or hardly even speak was 
that there was a great worm inside it, eating 
out all its brains. 

Tom was so puzzled and frightened with all 
he saw that he was longing to ask the meaning 
of it, and at last he stumbled over a respectable 
old stick lying half covered with earth. But 
a very stout and worthy stick it was, for it be- 
longed to good Roger Ascham in old time, and 
had carved on its head King Edward the Sixth 
with the Bible in his hand. 

" You see,” said the stick, " they were as pretty 
little children once as you could wish to see, and 
might have been so still if they had been only 
left to grow up like human beings, and then 
handed over to me; but their foolish fathers 
and mothers, instead of letting them pick flowers, 
and make dirt pies, and chase grasshoppers, and 
dance round the gooseberry bush, as little chil- 
dren should, kept them always at lessons, work- 
ing, working, working, learning weekday lessons 
[ 2 47 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


all weekdays, and Sunday lessons all Sunday, 
and weekly examinations every Saturday, and 
monthly examinations every month, and yearly 
examinations every year, everything seven times 
over, as if once was not enough, and enough as 
good as a feast — till their brains grew big, and 
their bodies grew small, and they were all changed 
into turnips, with little but water inside ; and 
still their foolish parents actually pick the leaves 
off them as fast as they grow, lest they should 
have anything green about them.” 

" Ah ! ” said Tom, " if dear Mrs. Doasyouwould- 
bedoneby knew of it, she would send them a lot 
of tops and balls and marbles and ninepins, and 
make them all as jolly as sand boys.” 

" It would be of no use,” said the stick. " They 
can’t play now if they tried. Don’t you see how 
their legs have turned to roots and grown into 
the ground, by never taking any exercise, but 
sapping and moping always in the same place? 
But here comes the Examiner-of-all-Examiners. 
So you had better get away, I warn you, or he 
will examine you and your dog into the bargain, 
and set him to examine all the other dogs, and 
you to examine all the other water babies. There 
is no escaping out of his hands, for his nose is 
[ 248 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

nine thousand miles long, and can go down chim- 
neys and through keyholes, upstairs, downstairs, 
in my lady’s chamber, examining all little boys, and 
the little boys’ tutors likewise. But when he is 
thrashed, — so Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid has prom- 
ised me, — I shall have the thrashing of him ; and 
if I don’t lay it on with a will, it ’s a pity.” 

Tom went off, but rather slowly and surlily, 
for he was somewhat minded to face this same 
Examiner-of-all-Examiners, who came striding 
among the poor turnips. 

But when he got near, he looked so big and 
burly, and shouted so loud to Tom to come and 
be examined, that Tom ran for his life, and the 
dog too. And really it was time, for the poor 
turnips, in their hurry and fright, crammed them- 
selves so fast to be ready for the Examiner, that 
they burst and popped by dozens all round him, 
and Tom thought he should be blown into the 
air, dog and all. 

And next he came to Oldwivesfabledom, and 
there he found a little boy sitting in the middle 
of the road and crying bitterly. 

"What are you crying for?” said Tom. 

" Because I am not as frightened as I could 
wish to be.” 


[249] 


THE WATER BABIES 


"Not frightened? You are a queer little chap; 
but if you want to be frightened, here goes — 
Boo ! ” 

" Ah,” said the little boy, " that is very kind 
of you, but I don’t feel that it has made any 
impression.” 

Tom offered to upset him, punch him, stamp 
on him, fettle him over the head with a brick, 
or anything else whatsoever which would give 
him the slightest comfort. 

But he only thanked Tom very civilly — in 
fine long words which he had heard other folk 
use, and which, therefore, he thought were fit 
and proper to use himself — and cried on till 
his papa and mamma came and sent off for 
the powwow man immediately. And a very 
good-natured gentleman and lady they were, 
and talked quite pleasantly to Tom about his 
travels, till the powwow man arrived with his 
thunderbox under his arm. 

Tom was a little frightened at first, for he 
thought it was Grimes. But he soon saw his 
mistake, for Grimes always looked a man in 
the face, and this fellow never did. And when 
he spoke, it was fire and smoke ; and when he 
sneezed, it was squibs and crackers ; and when 
[250] 


THE WATER BABIES 

he cried (which he did whenever it paid him), 
it was boiling pitch, and some of it was sure 
to stick. 

" Here we are again ! ” cried he, like the 
clown in a pantomime. " So you can’t feel fright- 
ened, my little dear — eh? I ’ll do that for you. 
I’ll make an impression on you! Yah! Boo! 
Whirroo ! Hullabaloo ! ” 

And he rattled, thumped, yelled, shouted, 
raved, roared, and stamped ; and then he touched 
a spring in the thunderbox, and out popped 
magic lanterns and pasteboard bogies and spring- 
heeled Jacks with such a horrid din, clatter, 
clank, roll, rattle, and roar that the little boy 
turned up the whites of his eyes and fainted 
right away. 

Ah ! don’t you wish that someone would go 
and convert those poor heathens and teach them 
not to frighten their little children into fits? 

" Now, then,” said the powwow man to Tom, 
" would n’t you like to be frightened, my little 
dear? For I can see plainly that you are a very 
naughty, graceless boy.” 

"You’re another,” quoth Tom very sturdily. 
And when the man ran at him and cried " Boo ! ” 
Tom ran at him in return and cried "Boo!” 

[251] 


THE WATER BABIES 


likewise, right in his face, and set the little dog 
upon him, and at his legs the dog went. 

At which, if you will believe it, the fellow 
turned, thunderbox and all, with a "Woof!” 
and ran for his life, screaming, " Help ! thieves ! 
murder! fire! He is going to kill me! I am 
a ruined man ! He will murder me and break, 
burn, and destroy my precious and invaluable 
thunderbox; and then you will have no more 
thundershowers in the land. Help! help! help!” 

Tom was very glad when he was safe out of the 
country, for the noise there made him all but deaf. 

And at last, after innumerable adventures, 
each more wonderful than the last, he saw 
before him a huge building. He walked toward 
it, wondering what it was, and having a strange 
fancy that he might find Mr. Grimes inside it, 
till he saw running toward him, and shouting 
" Stop ! ” three or four people, who, when they 
came nearer, were nothing else than policemen’s 
truncheons, running along without legs or arms. 

Tom was not astonished; he was long past 
that. Neither was he frightened, for he had 
been doing no harm. 

So he stopped, and when the foremost 
truncheon came up and asked his business, he 
[252] 


THE WATER BABIES 


showed Mother Carey’s pass; and the truncheon 
looked at it in the oddest fashion, for he had 
one eye in the middle of his upper end, so that 
when he looked at anything, being quite stiff, 
he had to slope himself and poke himself till 
it was a wonder why he did not tumble over. 

" All right ; pass on,” said he at last. And 
then he added, " I had better go with you, young 
man.” And Tom had no objection, for such 
company was both respectable and safe; so the 
truncheon coiled its thong neatly round its 
handle, to prevent tripping itself up, — for the 
thong had got loose in running, — and marched 
on by Tom’s side. 

" Why have you no policeman to carry you ? ” 
asked Tom, after a while. 

" Because we are not like those clumsy-made 
truncheons in the land world, which cannot go 
without having a whole man to carry them about. 
We do our own work for ourselves, and do it 
very well, though I say it who should not.” 

" Then why have you a thong to your handle ? ” 
asked Tom. 

"To hang ourselves up by, of course, when 
we are off duty.” 

Tom had got his answer, and had no more 
[253 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


to say till they came up to the great iron door 
of the prison. And there the truncheon knocked 
twice with its own head. 

A wicket in the door opened, and out looked 
a tremendous old brass blunderbuss, who was 
the porter, and Tom started back a little at the 
sight of him. 

" What is this ? ” he asked in a deep voice 
out of his broad bell mouth. 

" If you please, sir, it is only a young gentle- 
man from her ladyship, who wants to see Grimes, 
the master sweep.” 

" Grimes ? ” said the blunderbuss, and he 
pulled in his muzzle, perhaps to look over his 
prison lists. 

" Grimes is up chimney No. 345,” he said 
from the inside. " So the young gentleman had 
better go onto the roof.” 

Tom looked up at the enormous wall, which 
seemed at least ninety miles high, and wondered 
how he should ever get up ; but when he hinted 
that to the truncheon, it settled the matter in 
a moment, for it whisked round and gave him 
such a shove behind as sent him up to the 
roof in no time, with his little dog under 
his arm. 


[ 2 54 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


And there he walked along the leads till he 
met another truncheon, and told him his errand. 

"Very good,” it said. "Come along, but it 
will be of no use. He is the most hard-hearted 
fellow I have in charge, and thinks about nothing 
but beer and pipes, which are not allowed here, 
of course.” 

So they walked along over the leads, and very 
sooty they were, and Tom thought the chimneys 
must want sweeping very much. But he was 
surprised to see that the soot did not stick to 
his feet or dirty them in the least. Neither did 
the live coals, which were lying about in plenty, 
burn him, being a water baby. 

And at last they came to chimney 345. Out 
of the top of it, his head and shoulders just 
showing, stuck poor Mr. Grimes, so sooty and 
ugly that Tom could hardly bear to look at 
him. And in his mouth was a pipe ; but it 
was not alight, though he was pulling at it 
with all his might. 

"Attention, Mr. Grimes,” said the truncheon; 
"here is a gentleman come to see you.” 

But Mr. Grimes only said bad words and kept 
grumbling : " My pipe won’t draw. My pipe 
won’t draw.” 


[ 2 55 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

" Keep a civil tongue and attend ! ” said the 
truncheon, and popped up just like Punch, 
hitting Grimes a crack over the head with itself. 
He tried to get his hands out and rub the place, 
but he could not, for they were stuck fast in 
the chimney. 

Now he was forced to attend. 

"Hey!” he said; "why, it’s Tom! I suppose 
you have come here to laugh at me, you spiteful 
little atomy ? ” 

Tom assured him he had not, but only wanted 
to help him. 

" I don’t want anything except beer, and that 
I can’t get; and a light to this bothering pipe, 
and that I can’t get either.” 

"I ’ll get you one,” said Tom, and he took up 
a live coal (there were plenty lying about) and 
put it to Grimes’s pipe, but it went out instantly. 

"It’s no use,” said the truncheon, leaning 
itself up against the chimney and looking on. 
" I tell you, it is no use. His heart is so cold 
that it freezes everything that comes near him. 
You will see that presently, plain enough.” 

" Oh, of course, it ’s my fault. Everything ’s 
always my fault,” said Grimes. " Now don’t go 
to hit me again (for the truncheon started upright 
[256] 



THE WATER BABIES 


and looked very wicked); you know, if my arms 
were only free, you dare n’t hit me then.” 

The truncheon leaned back against the chim- 
ney and took no notice of the personal insult, like 
a well-trained policeman as it was. 

" But can’t I help you in any other way ? Can’t 
I help you to get out of this chimney ? ” said 
Tom. 

" No,” interposed the truncheon ; " he has 
come to the place where everybody must help 
themselves ; and he will find it out, I hope, 
before he is done with me.” 

" O yes,” said Grimes, " of course it ’s me. 
Did I ask to be brought here into prison? Did 
I ask to be set to sweep your foul chimneys? 
Did I ask to have lighted straw put under me 
to make me go up ? Did I ask to stick fast in 
the very first chimney of all, because it was 
so shamefully clogged up with soot ? Did I 
ask to stay here, I don’t know how long — 
a hundred years, I do believe — and never get 
my pipe nor my beer nor nothing fit for a beast, 
let alone a man ? ” 

" No,” answered a solemn voice behind. "No 
more did Tom when you behaved to him in 
the very same way.” 


THE WATER BABIES 


It was Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid. And when 
the truncheon saw her, it started bolt upright 
— Attention! — and made such a low bow that 
if it had not been full of the spirit of justice, it 
must have tumbled on its end and probably hurt 
its one eye. And Tom made his bow, too. 

" O ma’am,” he said, " don’t think about me ; 
that’s all past and gone, and good times and 
bad times and all times pass over. But may 
not I help poor Mr. Grimes? Mayn’t I try 
and get some of these bricks away, that he 
may move his arms ? ” 

" You may try, of course,” she said. 

So Tom pulled and tugged at the bricks, but 
he could not move one. And then he tried to 
wipe Mr. Grimes’s face, but the soot would not 
come off. 

" O dear ! ” he said, " I have come all this 
way, through all these terrible places, to help 
you, and now I am of no use after all.” 

" You had best leave me alone,” said Grimes; 
" you are a good-natured, forgiving little chap, 
and that ’s truth ; but you ’cl best be off. The 
hail ’s coming on soon, and it will beat the eyes 
out of your little head.” 

" What hail?” 


[ 2 59 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 

" Why, hail that falls every evening here ; and 
till it comes close to me, it ’s like so much warm 
rain, but then it turns to hail over my head and 
knocks me about like small shot.” 

" That hail will never come any more,” said 
the strange lady. " I have told you before what 
it was. It was your mother’s tears, — those which 
she shed when she prayed for you by her bed- 
side, — but your cold heart froze it into hail. 
But she has gone to heaven now, and will weep 
no more for her graceless son.” 

Then Grimes was silent awhile, and then he 
looked very sad. 

" So my old mother ’s gone, and I never there 
to speak to her ! Ah ! a good woman she was, 
and might have been a happy one, in her little 
school in Vendale, if it hadn’t been for me and 
my bad ways.” 

" Did she keep the school in Vendale? ” asked 
Tom. And then he told Grimes all the story 
of his going to her house, and how she could 
not abide the sight of a chimney sweep, and 
then how kind she was, and how he turned into 
a water baby. 

" Ah ! ” said Grimes, " good reason she had 
to hate the sight of a chimney sweep. I ran 
[260] 


THE WATER BABIES 

away from her and took up with the sweeps, 
and never let her know where I was, nor sent 
her a penny to help her, and now it ’s too late 
— too late! ” said Mr. Grimes. 

And he began crying and blubbering like 
a great baby, till his pipe dropped out of his 
mouth and broke all to bits. 

" O dear, if I was but a little chap in Vendale 
again, to see the clear beck, and the apple 
orchard, and the yew hedge, how different I 
would go on ! But it ’s too late now. So you 
go along, you kind little chap, and don’t stand 
to look at a man crying, that ’s old enough to 
be your father. I ’m beat now, and beat I must 
be. I Ve made my bed, and I must lie on it. 
Foul I would be, and foul I am, as an Irish- 
woman said to me once ; and little I heeded it. 
It’s all my own fault, but it’s too late.” And he 
cried so bitterly that Tom began crying, too. 

" Never too late,” said the fairy, in such a 
strange, soft, new voice that Tom looked up 
at her, and she was so beautiful for the moment 
that Tom half fancied she was her sister. 

No more was it too late. For as poor Grimes 
cried and blubbered on, his own tears did what 
his mother’s could not do, and Tom’s could not 
[261 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


do, and nobody’s on earth could do for him ; 
for they washed the soot off his face and off 
his clothes, and then they washed the mortar 
away from between the bricks, and the chimney 
crumbled down, and Grimes began to get out 
of it. 

Up jumped the truncheon and was going to 
hit him on the crown a tremendous thump and 
drive him down again like a cork into a bottle. 
But the strange lady put it aside. 

" Will you obey me if I give you a chance ? ” 

"As you please, ma’am. You ’re stronger than 
me, that I know too well, and wiser than me, 
I know too well also. And as for being my 
own master, I ’ve fared ill enough with that as 
yet. So whatever your ladyship pleases to order 
me, for I ’m beat, and that ’s the truth.” 

" Be it so, then — you may come out. But 
remember, disobey me again, and into a worse 
place still you go.” 

" I beg pardon, ma’am, but I never disobeyed 
you that I know of. I never had the honor of 
setting eyes upon you till I came to these 
ugly quarters.” 

"Never saw me? Who said to you, 'Those 
that will be foul, foul they will be ’ ? ” 

[262] 


THE WATER BABIES 


Grimes looked up, and Tom looked up, too, 
for the voice was that of the Irishwoman who 
met them the day that they went out together 
to Harthover. " I gave you your warning then, 
but you gave it yourself a thousand times before 
and since. Every bad word that you said, every 
cruel and mean thing that you did, every time 
that you got tipsy, every day that you went dirty, 
you were disobeying me, whether you knew it 
or not.” 

" If I ’d only known, ma ’am — ” 

" You knew well enough that you were dis- 
obeying something, though you did not know it 
was me. But come out and take your chance.” 

So Grimes stepped out of the chimney, and 
really, if it had not been for the scars on his 
face, he looked as clean and respectable as a 
master sweep need look. 

" Take him away,” said she to the truncheon, 
" and give him his ticket of leave.” 

" And what is he to do, ma ’am ? ” 

" Get him to sweep out the crater of Etna ; 
he will find some very steady men working out 
their time there, who will teach him his business ; 
but mind, if that crater gets choked again, and 
there is an earthquake in consequence, bring 
[263] 


THE WATER BABIES 


them all to me, and I shall investigate the case 
very severely.” 

So the truncheon marched off Mr. Grimes, 
looking as meek as a drowned worm. 

And for aught I know, or do not know, he is 
sweeping the crater of Etna to this very day. 

" And now,” said the fairy to Tom, "your 
work here is done. You may as well go back 
again.” 

" I should be glad enough to go,” said Tom, 
"but how am I to get up that great hole again 
now the steam has stopped blowing ? ” 

" I will take you up the back stairs, but I must 
bandage your eyes first, for I never allow anybody 
to see those back stairs of mine.” 

" I am sure I shall not tell anybody about 
them, ma ’am, if you bid me not.” 

"Aha! So you think, my little man; but you 
would soon forget your promise if you got back 
into the land world. For if people only once 
found out that you had been up my back stairs, 
you would have all the fine ladies kneeling to 
you, and the rich men emptying their purses 
before you, and statesmen offering you place 
and power, and young and old, rich and poor, 
crying to you, ' Only tell us the great back-stairs 
[264] 


THE WATER BABIES 

secret, and we will be your slaves ; we will make 
you lord, king, emperor, bishop, archbishop, 
pope if you like — only tell us the secret of 
the back stairs. For thousands of years we 
have been paying and petting and obeying and 
worshiping quacks who told us they had the 
key of the back stairs and could smuggle us 
up them, and in spite of all our disappointments 
we will honor and glorify and adore you on the 
chance of your knowing something about the 
back stairs, that we may all go on a pilgrimage 
to it and, even if we cannot get up it, lie at the 
foot of it and cry: 

" 1 " O back stairs, 
precious back stairs, 
invaluable back stairs, 
necessary back stairs, 
good-natured back stairs, 
accommodating back stairs, 
well-bred back stairs, 
comfortable back stairs, 
humane back stairs, 
reasonable back stairs, 
long-sought back stairs, 
coveted back stairs, 
aristocratic back stairs, 

[265] 


THE WATER BABIES 


respectable back stairs, 
gentlemanlike back stairs, 
ladylike back stairs, 
economical back stairs, 
practical back stairs, 
all-but-omnipotent back stairs, 
etc. 

save us from the consequences of our own actions, 
and from the cruel fairy, Mrs. Bedonebyasyou- 
did ! ” ’ Do not you think that you would be a 
little tempted then to tell what you know, 
laddie ? ” 

Tom thought so, certainly. "But why do they 
want so to know about the back stairs ? ” asked 
he, being a little frightened at the long words, 
and not understanding them the least, as indeed 
he was not meant to do, or you either. 

" That I shall not tell you. I never put things 
into little folk’s heads which are but too likely 
to come there of themselves. So come, now 
I must bandage your eyes.” So she tied the 
bandage on his eyes with one hand, and with 
the other she took it off. 

" Now,” she said, " you are safe up the stairs.” 
Tom opened his eyes very wide, and his mouth 
too, for he had not, as he thought, moved a 
[266] 


THE WATER BABIES 

single step. But when he looked round him, 
there could be no doubt that he was safe up 
the back stairs, whatsoever they may be, which 
no man is going to tell you, for the plain reason 
that no man knows. 

The first thing which Tom saw was the black 
cedars, high and sharp against the rosy dawn, 
and St. Brendan’s Isle reflected double in the 
still, broad, silver sea. The wind sang softly 
in the cedars, and the water sang among the 
caves ; the sea birds sang as they streamed out 
into the ocean, and the land birds as they built 
among the boughs; and the air was so full of 
song that it stirred St. Brendan and his hermits 
as they slumbered in the shade, and they moved 
their good old lips and sang their morning hymn 
amid their dreams. But among all the songs, one 
came across the water more sweet and clear than 
all, for it was the song of a young girl’s voice. 

And what was the song which she sang? Ah, 
my little man, I am too old to sing that song, 
and you too young to understand it. But have 
patience, and keep your eye single and your 
hands clean, and you will learn some day to 
sing it yourself, without needing any man to 
teach you. 


[267] 


THE WATER BABIES 

And as Tom neared the island, there sat upon 
a rock the most graceful creature that ever was 
seen, looking down, with her chin upon her hand, 
and paddling with her feet in the water. And 
when they came to her, she looked up, and 
behold it was Ellie. 

" O Miss Ellie,” said he, " how you are grown ! ” 

"O T om,” said she, " how you are grown, too ! ” 

And no wonder; they were both quite grown 
up, he into a tall man and she into a beautiful 
woman. 

" Perhaps I may be grown,” she said ; " I have 
had time enough, for I have been sitting here 
waiting for you many a hundred years, till I 
thought you were never coming.” 

"Many a hundred years?” thought Tom; 
but he had seen so much in his travels that 
he had quite given up being astonished, and, 
indeed, he could think of nothing but Ellie. So 
he stood and looked at Ellie, and Ellie looked 
at him, and they liked the employment so much 
that they stood and looked for seven years more, 
and neither spoke nor stirred. 

At last they heard the fairy say : " Attention, 
children ! Are you never going to look at me 
again r 


[ 268] 


THE WATER BABIES 


" We have been looking at you all this while,” 
they said. And so they thought they had been. 

" Then look at me once more,” said she. 

They looked, and both of them cried out at 
once, " Oh, who are you, after all ? ” 

"You are our dear Mrs. Doasyouwouldbe- 
doneby.” 

" No, you are good Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid, 
but you have grown quite beautiful now ! ” 

"To you,” said the fairy. " But look again.” 

"You are Mother Carey,” said Tom, in a very 
low, solemn voice, for he had found out something 
which made him very happy, and yet frightened 
him more than all that he had ever seen. 

" But you are grown quite young again.” 

"To you,” said the fairy. "Look again.” 

"You are the Irishwoman who met me the 
day I went to Harthover!” 

And when they looked, she was neither of 
them, and yet all of them at once. 

" My name is written in my eyes, if you have 
eyes to see it there.” 

And they looked into her great, deep, soft 
eyes, and they changed again and again into 
every hue, as the light changes in a diamond. 

" Now read my name,” said she at last. 

[269] 


THE WATER BABIES 


And her eyes flashed, for one moment, clear, 
white, blazing light; but the children could not 
read her name, for they were dazzled and hid 
their faces in their hands. 

" Not yet, young things, not yet,” said she 
smiling, and then she turned to Ellie. 

"You may take him home with you now on 
Sundays, Ellie. He has won his spurs in the 
great battle, and become fit to go with you 
and be a man, because he has done the thing 
he did not like.” 

So Tom went home with Ellie on Sundays, 
and sometimes on weekdays too ; and he is 
now a great man of science, and can plan rail- 
roads and steam engines and electric telegraphs 
and rifled guns and so forth, and knows every- 
thing about everything, except why a hen’s egg 
doesn’t turn into a crocodile, and two or three 
other little things which no one will know till 
the coming of the Cocqcigrues. And all this 
from what he learned when he was a water baby 
under the sea. 

"And of course Tom married Ellie?” 

My dear child, what a silly notion ! Don’t you 
know that no one ever marries in a fairy tale, 
under the rank of a prince or a princess? 

[ 270] 


THE WATER BABIES 

"And Tom’s dog?” 

Oh, you may see him any clear night in July, 
for the old Dog Star was so worn out by the 
last three hot summers that there have been 
no dog days since; so that they had to take 
him down and put Tom’s dog in his place. 
Therefore, as new brooms sweep clean, we may 
hope for some warm weather this year. And 
that is the end of my story. 

MORAL 

And now, my dear little man, what should we 
learn from this parable? 

We should learn thirty-seven or thirty-nine 
things, I am not exactly sure which. But one 
thing, at least, we may learn, and that is this: 
when we see efts in the ponds, never to throw 
stones at them, or catch them with crooked pins, 
or put them into vivariums with sticklebacks, 
that the sticklebacks may prick them in their 
poor little stomachs and make them jump out 
of the glass into somebody’s workbox and so 
come to a bad end. For these efts are nothing 
else but the water babies who are stupid and 
dirty and will not learn their lessons and keep 
themselves clean ; and their skulls grow flat, 

[ 271 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


their jaws grow out, and their brains grow small, 
and their tails grow long, and they lose all their 
ribs (which I am sure you would not like to 
do), and their skins grow dirty and spotted, and 
they never get into the clear rivers, much less 
into the great, wide sea, but hang about in 
dirty ponds and live in the mud and eat worms, 
as they deserve to do. 

But that is no reason why you should ill-use 
them, but only why you should pity them, and 
be kind to them, and hope that some day they 
will wake up and be ashamed of their dirty, lazy, 
stupid life, and try to amend and become some- 
thing better once more. For perhaps, if they 
do, their brains may grow bigger, and their 
jaws grow smaller, and their ribs come back, 
and their tails wither off, and they will turn 
into water babies again, and perhaps, after that, 
into land babies, and after that, perhaps, into 
grown men. 

You know they won’t? Very well, I dare say 
you know best. But you see, some folks have 
a great liking for those poor little efts. They 
never did anybody any harm, or could if they 
tried ; and their only fault is that they do no 
good, any more than some thousands of their 
[272] 


THE WATER BABIES 


betters. But what with ducks, and what with 
pike, and what with sticklebacks, and what with 
water beetles, and what with naughty boys, they 
are " sae sair haddened doun,” as the Scotsmen 
say, that it is a wonder how they live ; and some 
folks can’t help hoping, with good Bishop Butler, 
that they may have another chance to make 
things fair and even, somewhere, somewhen, 
somehow. 

Meanwhile, do you learn your lessons, and 
thank God that you have plenty of cold water 
to wash in, and wash in it, too, like a true English- 
man. And then, if my story is not true, some- 
thing better is ; and if I am not quite right, 
still you will be, as long as you stick to hard 
work and cold water. 

But remember, always, as I told you at first, 
that this is all a fairy tale, and only fun and 
pretense, and therefore you are not to believe 
a word of it, even if it is true. 


[273] 



NOTES 


CHAPTER I 

Page 3. chimney sweep : In England small boys used to be trained 
to climb the huge, crooked chimneys to brush out the soot. Only 
soft coal was, and still is, used in England, and the soot from this 
accumulates rapidly. The chimneys are now better made and are 
cleaned by other means than small boys. 

the North country : the north of England ; that is, the part 
near the Scottish border. 

Page 4. anklejacks : large boots reaching slightly above the ankles 
and often laced. 

Page 5. apprentices : persons bound by a legal process to serve 
another person for a certain length of time, in return for in- 
struction in an art dr a trade. 

Page 7. frame-breaking riots : English workmen often resorted to 
destructive riots to show their disapproval of the introduction of 
power-run machinery to displace the wooden frames run by hand. 
These riots occurred in the years 181 1-1818. 

Page 8 . my dear little boy : This and all similar references are to 
Kingsley’s youngest son, Grenville Arthur, for whom the story 
was written. 

buirdly : strong, athletic. 
gradely : good-looking. 

Page 9. pitmen : miners. 

Page 10. pitbird : the reed warbler. 

Page i i. 7 nadder : a plant from which a red dye is made. 

Galway : a town and a county on the west coast of Ireland. 

Page 14. beadle: an inferior parish officer whose duty it is to 
keep order and punish petty offenders. 

[ 2 75 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


Page 15. copse: wood. 

Martinmas : the eleventh of November; the feast of St. 
Martin. 

Page 23. man nailed to a cross : The crucifix is of course meant. 
Page 28. stoat : ermine, a small animal prized for its fur. 

Page 31. cover: underbrush. 
lawyers: brambles. 

Page 33. moor : an extensive area of waste land, often overgrown 
with heather and usually more or less marshy. 


CHAPTER II 

Page 45. whit eb earn : a tree of the apple family. 

Page 48. beck : brook. 

Page 50. cle?nmed : starved, famished. 
sweep : chimney sweep. 

Page 5 1 . hap : cover. 

Page 64. Professor Owen : Sir Richard Owen, an English anato- 
mist and zoologist. 

Professor Huxley : Thomas Henry Huxley, a famous Eng- 
lish biologist. 

Page 67. caddis : the larva of a fly which lays its eggs in water. 

Page 68. dalesmen : those who live in the valley sections of the 
north of England. 


CHAPTER III 

Page 69. grig: cricket. 

Page 77. " Struwweipeter" : This is the name of a German pic- 
ture book which has been popular with the children of every 
country. 

Page 83. Blondin : a French acrobat and tight-rope walker. He 
crossed Niagara on a tight rope several times. 

Leotard : probably also an acrobat of local fame. 

Page 86. Houdin : a famous French conjuror who died in 1871. 
Frikell, a German, and Robin, a Hollander, also enjoyed local 
fame for their conjuring powers. 

[276] 


NOTES 


Page 87. St. Vitus's dance : a nervous disease which causes a 
twitching of some of the muscles. 

Page 92. Cheshire cat : a grinning cat which is familiar to us 
through its appearance in " Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” 
to give Alice advice. 

pollack : a fish resembling the cod and valued as a food. 

Page 93. burn : brook. 

Page 105. blue-blooded hidalgo of Spain : Spanish nobleman of 
the lower class ; a haughty, domineering type of person. 

CHAPTER IV 

Page i i 4. sea pies : oyster catchers or sea magpies, birds of beauti- 
ful plumage. 

Page i 24. bench : court of justice. 

Pompeii : an ancient city of Italy buried under volcanic debris. 

Professor Ptthmllnsprts : The vowels have been omitted in 
this name ; in full it is ” Putthemallinspirits.” Zoological speci- 
mens are preserved in spirits, or alcohol. 

Page 127. *' The T?'iumph of Galatea ” .* Galatea was a sea nymph. 
Raphael’s painting of this name is still preserved in Rome. 

burning mountain : volcano. 

Page i 28. holothurian : a sea cucumber. 

Synapta : a genus of sea cucumbers. 

Page 130. cephalopod : the highest class of shellfish. They have a 
highly developed head, with large, well-organized ears and eyes. 

CHAPTER V 

Page 138. Polonius : a garrulous old courtier of Denmark, father 
of Ophelia in Shakespeare’s " Hamlet.” He is full of moral 
precepts and fancies himself to be shrewd. 

Page 144. St. Brendan's fairy isle : St. Brendan (or Brandan) was 
an Irish monk of the sixth century. He is noted chiefly for his 
expedition to seek a terrestrial paradise supposed to exist on an 
island of the Atlantic. When America was first discovered, many 
persons believed it was St. Brendan’s isle. 

[277 ] 


THE WATER BABIES 


Page 145. Kerry coast : the west coast of Ireland. The Blasquets 
are islands west of Kerry. 

Page i 46. Plato : a Greek philosopher. 

Atlantis : a mythical island of the ancient world, mentioned 
by Plato, Pliny, and other early writers. It was said to have 
been sunk beneath the ocean by an earthquake. 

Page 147. tnadrepoi'es : a kind of coral. 

Page 163. " Struwwelpeter . . . inkstand” : One of the pictures 
in " Struwwelpeter ” shows St. Nicholas punishing a naughty 
boy by dipping him in an inkwell. 

CHAPTER VI 

Page i 68. sea bull's-eyes and sea lollipops : Bull’s-eyes are a kind 
of very hard, globular candy ; the lollipops are also a hard candy, 
often in the form of a lump on a stick. 

Page 173. sea egg : sea urchin, which is covered with slender 
spines. 

Page i 86. tufa : porous rock. 

Page 188. flapdoodle : food for fools. 

Page i 89. cock-and-bull story : an extravagant, boastful story. 

Page 194. M. Du Chaillu : a Franco-American traveler and lec- 
turer who traveled in Africa. 

CHAPTER VII 

Page 196. Mother Carey : from the Latin Mater Cara (beloved 
mother) used by the Levantine sailors. The stormy petrels were 
called by sailors " Mother Carey’s chickens,” and often the 
snowflakes were given the same name. 

Page 198. Garefowl (sometimes spelled gaifowl): an Icelandic 
bird, the great auk. 

Page 200. pinner : a bib. 

Page 203. Garefowlskerry : A skerry is a rocky isle. 

Page 204. dovekies : small, short-billed auks. 

Page 206. Allfowlsness : one of the many made-up names in the 
story. 


[278] 


NOTES 


Page 208. Sutherland: The most northwestern county of Scotland. 

Shetlands : islands north of Scotland. 

Spitzbergen : a group of islands in the Arctic Ocean. 

Jan Mayen's Land : an island in the Arctic Ocean, three 
hundred miles east of Greenland. 

puffins : comical sea birds of the auk family. 

Page 2 1 2. mollymauks : large petrels. 

Page 213. right whales and horse whales: The right whale is 
the huge whalebone animal, while the horse whale is the walrus. 

Page 217. Mount Erebus : a huge volcano on the Antarctic continent. 

Page 224. Prometheus : According to the Greek legend, Prome- 
theus stole fire from the gods and bestowed it on men. 

Epimetheus : the brother of Prometheus. In spite of his 
brother’s protest he accepted Pandora as his wife and thus brought 
sorrow to the human race. It was Pandora who let escape from 
a box all the ills which have since afflicted human beings. Of 
this legend there are many variations, and Kingsley’s tale sug- 
gests a version slightly different from the one commonly met 
with in textbooks of mythology. 

Page 225. lucifers: matches. 

Page 226. set the Thames on Jire : The expression " to set the 
Thames (or any) river on fire ” is a fanciful way of saying " to 
do something very extraordinary.” 


CHAPTER VIII 

Page 228. world pap : a mixture from which the parts of the 
earth were formed. 

Page 230. bogy : goblin. 

Page 233. tuckshops : pastry shops. 

Page 242. " Jack shall have Gill,” etc. : from Shakespeare’s " A 
Midsummer Night’s Dream,” III, ii, 461. 

Captain Gulliver : the hero of Swift’s " Gulliver’s Travels,” 
who makes four voyages, in one of which he discovers the Isle 
of Laputa, a flying island whose inhabitants devote all their 
time to scientific speculation. 

[279] 


THE WATER BABIES 


Page 243. mangel-wurzel : a large, coarse variety of beet. 

Page 244. a Lyrce : the white star Vega, the sixth brightest star 
in the heavens and brightest of the constellation of the Lyre. 

/3 Camelopardalis : the second brightest star in the Giraffe, a 
northern constellation between Cassiopeia and Ursa Major. 

Mucius Sccevola : a legendary Roman hero of the sixth 
century B.c. 

Page 249. Oldwivesfabledom : " Old wives’ fables ” are tales in- 
vented by popular fancy or superstition and at some time com- 
monly believed. Hence, here, the land where such tales are 
invented is meant. 

Page 252. truncheons : policemen’s batons. 

Page 254. brass blunderbuss : a short gun with a large bore and 
a bell muzzle. 

Page 256. Punch: the ludicrous humpback who quarrels with his 
wife Judy in the Punch and Judy show. 
atomy : pygmy. 

Page 270. Cocqcigrues : a made-to-order name. 

Page 271. Dog Star: Sirius, whose appearance is believed by 
some persons to cause the humid weather called " dog days.” 
sticklebacks : small fish having prickly spines. 


[ 280 ] 


ANNOUNCEMENTS 



CLASSICS FOR CHILDREN 


T HIS series of books consists so far as possible of 
complete works from the great masters, specially 
edited to meet the wants of young people in the school 
•and in the home. 


iEsop’s Fables 

Andersen’s Fairy Tales, Part i 
Andersen’s Fairy Tales, Part 2 
Arabian Nights 
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Burt’s Stories from Plato 
Cervantes’s Don Quixote 
Chamisso’s Peter Schlemihl 
Chesterfield’s Letters 
Church’s Stories of the Old World 
Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe 
Dickens’s Tale of Two Cities 
Epictetus 

Fiske-Irving’s Washington 
Fouqu6’s Undine 
Francillon’s Gods and Heroes 
Franklin: His Life by Himself 
Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield 
Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Part I 
Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Part II 
Grote and S6gur’s Two Great Retreats 
Hale’s Man without a Country 
Hughes’s Tom Brown at Rugby 
Hugo’s Jean Valjean 
Irving’s Alhambra 

I rving’s Sketch-Book (Six Selections) 
Jefferies’s Sir Bevis 
Johnson’s Rasselas 
Kingsley’s Greek Heroes 
Kingsley’s Water-Babies 


Lamb’s Adventures of Ulysses 
Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare 
Litchfield’s Nine Worlds 
Marcus Aurelius 

Martineau’s Peasant and the Prince 
Montgomery’s Heroic Ballads 
Plutarch’s Lives 
Ramie’s Bimbi 
Ruskin, Selections from 
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Saintine’s Picciola 
Scott’s Guy Mannering 
Ivanhoe 

Lady of the Lake 
Lay of the Last Minstrel 
Marmion 
Old Mortality 
Quentin Durward 
Rob Roy 

Tales of a Grandfather 
Talisman 

Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice 
Southey’s Life of Nelson 
Spyri’s Heidi 
Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels 
White’s Selborne 

Williams and Foster’s Selections for 
Memorizing 

Wyss’s Swiss Family Robinson 


II 


GINN & COMPANY Publishers 


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This idyl tells of the life of a little peasant girl on a Norwegian farm and of 
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heart. 


12 c 

GINN AND COMPANY Publishers 


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